Left Wing Lies



Left Wing Lies?What a Worker Found in his Quest for a Definition of Socialismby:?Ken EllisRevision #6First Complete Working Copy: March 1995Revision #5: August 2000, then uploaded onto the wwwebRevision #6: Now complete???Part A revised: 11-22-02???Part B revised: 11-22-02???Part C revised: 11-22-02???Part D revised: 01-11-03???Part E revised: 02-06-03???Part F revised: 02-13-03???Part G revised: 02-20-03???Part H revised: 03-08-03???'They think that just because we are poor, that we must be stupid as well, as though?one caused the other, and as though we cannot see through their scam.' - K.E.???"The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class." - EngelsRear Jacket Blurb???A worker's first-hand discovery of how the?Socialist Labor Party?altered the theories and quotes of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in order to mislead the lower classes into adopting an?anarchist program?that had already been rejected by Marx and Engels. The details of which theories were falsified, how quotes from the founders of socialism were altered, and what purposes the alterations served. How?SLP?leaders squelched dissent and civilized discussion through censorship, secrecy, and a bureaucratic?Party?structure; and how it provides less?freedom of speech?for its members than the government which they claim to want to?abolish. How alienation makes people susceptible to sectarian movements. Theorganizational structure of the SLP?is contrasted with that of the?First International Workingmen's Association. The?Marxist?theory of the state and the?Paris Commune?are compared to?state socialist?and?anarchist?theories. What Marx envisioned for monarchies, republics, and the future. What hasn't worked in?Marxism?and?Leninism. What the lower classes can do before?machine labor completely replaces human labor, and lots more.????This book hopefully contains the proof that socialism as practiced today by a myriad number of sects, groups and parties, is little better than a pack of lies, and, for that reason, are all worthless to the working classes."Live working or die fighting."???"The watchword of the modern proletariat" that the silk winders of Lyons inscribed upon their banner during their strike (From Marx's 1869 "Report on the Basle Congress").?TABLE OF CONTENTS?Styles??6?Abbreviations and Glossary??6?Dedication??6?Acknowledgments??7?Preface??8?Foreword??9?Introduction?10PART ONE: THE MOSTLY FOLKSY AND GOSSIPY PART?Early Involvement?12?The Big Move?18?New York, New York?19?To the West, at Last?22?Settling In?24?Things to Think About?25?"Bullshit!"?26?The 1975?National Executive Committee Session?28?Section?Santa Clara?30?A Trip Back East?32?1976 Detroit?National Convention?34?The Old?NEC Reports?36?The Disappearance of the Notes?39?The Significance of the?NEC Reports?40?The Sacred Cash Cow?42?Startling Discoveries?43?The?State Convention?44?"Proletarian Democracy versus Dictatorships and Despotism"?47PART TWO: THE?DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT??The?Worker-Peasant Alliance?56?Alleged?Predominance of Russian Middle Classes?58?Alleged?Absence of the American Middle Classes?62?Misquoting the Founders of?Socialism?63?Defeating the Middle Classes?66?Proletarian Dictatorship?...?over the Peasantry??68?"Conditions!"?70?Another Contradiction?73?Viva la Republic!?73?The?Resolution?75?My Meeting with the?National Secretary?77PART THREE: THE NATURE OF THE STATE?A.P.'s?Preface?to: "Socialism: From Utopia to Science"??80?Analysis of Arnold Petersen's?Preface??83?Recap of Falsifications, Misrepresentations, etc.?119?The?SLP's Theories of the State?123?What to Think??124?The Real Theories of the State?124?A Caricature of?Marxist?Philosophy?125?Anarchist World Outlook?127?Anarchy?and the?Party?129?The Aftermath?131?The Send Off?132?Unity and Separation?134?Psychological Conflicts?136?The Departure?139?Freedom of Information?and Censorship?141?Party Process?145PART FOUR: "PD vs. D+D" REVISITED?Taxes!?177?Reform?or?Revolution??184?Union?Questions?186?A Fate for the State?192?One or Two Stages of?Socialism??198?The?Commune?and the State?203?Economic Conditions and Political Solutions?212?A Swipe at?Unions?222?Unions?are Good,?Politics?Bad??228?The Day De Leon?Saved the World?236?The?Party?Destructive?242?SLP Form and Function?256?Comparison to the?First International?258?Party?and Power?261?A False Dichotomy?263?Proletarian?Economic Dictatorship?274?David vs. Goliath Revisited?285?Conditions, Forms and Dictatorship?287?Two Types of?Transition?306?Union?and?Party?Relations?313?The Role of Force?328?Nowhere to Run?354?War?and?Peace?359?Parting Shots?366PART FIVE: CONCLUDING REMARKS?Early Roots of?Anarchy?373?Autonomy?375?Marx and Engels on Sectarianism?376?Anarchist World Outlook?380?SLP?Members?382?The Moral Pits?386?Insidious Influences?387?How the?SLP?Might Greet This Book?388?What's Next??393?What Can Be Done??394APPENDICES?APPENDIX ONE:?Engels on America and the?SLP?396?APPENDIX TWO:?Workmen's Advocate?+ Sorge-De Leon Cntrvrsy?490?APPENDIX THREE:?Lenin and the?SLP?532?APPENDIX FOUR:?Examples of?Anarchist Ideology?539INDEXES?Name Index?548?Subject Index?552?Organization Index?571?Publication Index?576?END?581???Excerpts from my old notebooks from the 1970's appear in quotation marks, as in: "sample". Passages slightly altered for inclusion here appear in single quotation marks, as in: 'sample'.???Direct quotes from?Socialist Labor Party?publications, or from the pen of Arnold Petersen, appear in?blue?or?purple, depending on veracity. Mere phrases or portions of sentences appear in single quotes.???Creative interpretations of the views of anarchists, the?SLP, A.P., or other dubious sources, appear in single quotes, either in?blue?or?purple.???Authorized quotes of Marx, Engels, and Lenin appear in?red. Creative interpretations of their works - but true to author intent - appear in?brown.???Editors' and?publishers' footnotes from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, the?Workmen's Advocate, and other historical sources, appear in?green. Undisputed material is also in?green.???Statements by individuals appear in?blue?or?purple.???Quotation mark colorings indicate exactly 'who is quoting whom'.???Contents within parentheses ( ) were provided by the author of the sentence.???Pertinent explanations from?editors?and?publishers?are often provided within brackets [ ] in?green.???Within quoted passages, my own interjections appear within fancy brackets { }.???Ellipses dots ... in or near quotes indicate deleted irrelevant or superfluous text.Abbreviations and Glossary???A.P. = Arnold Petersen,?National Secretary?of the?SLP?from 1913 to 1968.???Bourgeois (boor-jwah) = capitalistic, referring to owners of means of production.???Bourgeoisie (boor-jwah-zee) = capitalist class, owners of means of production.???Capitalists = Owners of land, factories and other means of production.???Communism = Mostly used in the?Leninist?theoretical sense of the future "administration of things", or the classless, stateless society after the?proletarian dictatorship?withers away.???Executive?=?National Executive Committee?of the?SLP.???First World = The most capitalistically, democratically, and technologically advanced countries.???FI?=?First International Workingmen's Association, 1864-1872.???GC?=?General?(or?Central)?Council?of the?First International.???Ms. = Manuscript.???NEC?=?National Executive Committee?of the?SLP.???NO?=?National Office?of the?SLP.???NS?=?National Secretary?of the?SLP.???Organizer?= Elected leader of a?Section.???"PD vs. D+D" = "Proletarian Democracy versus Dictatorships and Despotism", Arnold Petersen's 64-page 1931?pamphlet?that poorly critiqued?Marxist?theory.???People?= current journal of the?SLP, 1980 -???Proletariat = The working class, non-owners of means of production, owning only their ability to work.????RSDLP?=?Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.???Second World = Countries between First and Third World, in terms of level of development.???Section?= The basic local unit of organization of the?SLP.???SLP = Socialist Labor Party, 1876 -???Socialism?= occasionally used in reference to warm and fuzzy?Social Democracy, but most often to Marx's 'first phase of communist society'; the?dictatorship of the proletariat; the era of?transition?to the classless, stateless?administration of things.???'Socialist Party' = Before the?Socialist Party?split off from the?SLP?in 1899, the?SLP?was frequently called the 'Socialist Party'. But, the post-1899?SP?plays no part in this book.???S-D, or?SD?=?Social-Democratic.???SIU?=?Socialist Industrial Unionism,?program?of the?SLP.???Third World = The least technologically and economically developed countries.???WA?=?Workmen's Advocate, the early?SLP?newspaper, 1883-1891.???WP?=?Weekly People, a longtime journal of the?SLP, 1914-80.Dedication???For a long time I wondered about to whom I should dedicate this book. But, after re-reading their letters to me, I feel that it can only be dedicated to rank-and-file workers.Acknowledgments???For providing the inspiration to finally start writing my memoirs of?Party?experiences, Frank Girard, editor of the?Discussion Bulletin, deserves thanks. My book had been on the back burner for far too long, and without a little stimulus, it might never have been written.????Several libraries have been of great assistance. For readings and translations of German texts, and for access to their collections, the?Niebyl-Proctor Library?was most helpful. Also, the?Center for Socialist History, the?Wisconsin?State Historical Society, the?Berkeley Public Library, and the libraries at the?University of California at Berkeley, all earned a big 'thank you'.????Friends and kinfolk deserve thanks for being patient, understanding, tolerant and supportive in seeing me through this long task that I didn't want to let go of after finally tackling it. After the initial impetus to start writing early in 1992, what was initially intended to be no more than a 25 page pamphlet grew into a book, the book grew larger and more encompassing, and it gradually avalanched into an all-absorbing activity.Preface???In this book, I purposely didn't use the names of?Party?members or associates during my few years in the?Socialist Labor Party. Using proper names could imply that problems back then revolved around personal conflicts. Even though a certain amount of mild and civil conflict around various socialist and organizational theories occurred over the course of 1976-7, the contents of this book will prove that conflicts of interests and ideologies sought expression in individuals.????This book also cannot pretend to be an ultra-scholarly presentation of?Marxist?theories. As negations of?Marxist?theories in?Party?literature were encountered, their rebuttals by Marx, Engels and Lenin were researched and juxtaposed with the?SLP?theories for the reader to compare. This book is an exploration of a?Party's anarchist ideology that spanned more than a century.Foreword???Zeno said, "Falsity must not be demonstrated as untrue because the opposite is true, but in itself?...". Similarly,?De Leonism,?Industrial Unionism, or the?SLP?concept of socialism cannot be demonstrated as false simply because it varies so much from?Marxism, but, rather,?De Leonism?must be shown to be false within itself, i.e., it has to be shown to be internally contradictory and inconsistent, which is a major goal of this book. If?De Leonism?can be shown to be false within itself, and if its?negations can be negated, then an ordinary understanding of?De Leonism?may be replaced with an understanding of a higher type, one that acknowledges?De Leonism's internal inconsistencies.????Some people might find the many references to revolutionary violence disturbing, but it was important to place its many references in their proper contexts. Violence occurred while overthrowing some absolute monarchies, and while liberating some colonies, but violence is not necessary for social progress in democracies. Those who advocate violence as a catalyst for social change have been unconscionably misguided.???This book started out with a rather limited scope, but after it developed beyond a certain point, I began to realize that the?SLP?had distorted more of the?Marxist?theories, and in a more insidious way, than what I had originally suspected. Since this book is "application specific" to the?SLP, workers involved in other movements may have their own webs of lies to unravel. If this book has helped to clarify any issue, it will not have been written in vain.Introduction???In 1972, I got involved with the?Socialist Labor Party, commonly known as the?SLP, one of the oldest political parties in the United States, with roots going back to 1876. At a political protest rally of some sort outside of Boston City Hall in 1972, I chanced to pick up a?Weekly People?newspaper, or perhaps an?SLP leaflet, as well as literature from other organizations. When I took it home to digest it all, the?SLP's seemingly scholarly approach and appearance of being well grounded in history impressed me enough to want to follow up and learn more about socialism from the?SLP.????To give the reader a perspective on why anyone would want to learn anything about socialism, a little of my background might be in order. While growing up near the coast of Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, I became conscious at the age of 11 of a feeling of alienation, which worsened during my adolescence. After three years of Mechanical Engineering studies at a respectable college, I dropped out due to a profound lack of motivation. While struggling to figure out what was wrong, I read psychological texts, and before long convinced myself that my entire problem was caused by a deep neurosis. The texts led me to believe that my case was hopeless, especially without psychoanalysis, which I couldn't afford. I wallowed in sufficient misery for a while to finally get myself sent off to an analyst anyway, who lectured to me and prescribed pills which I didn't really want to take, and the first radical I met easily convinced me to stop taking them. A year of listening to an analyst's repetitive boring lecture finally inspired me to quit psychoanalysis altogether, though against the analyst's advice.????Not long after quitting the psychotropics, I also accidentally stumbled on a technique to deal with negative feelings, which consisted of trying to feel them to extremes, or to amplify them, and to listen to what came out of the ensuing silence. Years later, I became aware that other analysts had already used this technique in their practices. After a number of such sessions, which finally ended in a sense of inner peace, I felt as though that particular kind of work on myself had been completed, though I didn't feel as though everything was "perfect".?After studying more psychology for a while in hopes of finding out why everything was the way it was, I began to detect different schools of thought in psychology, and the more I dug into them, the more I began to appreciate the radical psychologists. From there I moved on to appreciate sociology and then to radical sociologists and finally, to psychologists who espoused socialism. Dr. Franz Fanon's classic book "Wretched of the Earth" told of Algerians who seemed driven to despair from living in a society with enormous differences in wealth between different economic classes, but when Algeria liberated itself from French colonial domination in the early 50's, a lot of 'mental illnesses' suddenly cleared up by themselves, and people were not being committed, or did not commit themselves into mental institutions, at anywhere near the usual rate. From this revelation, I jumped into the camp of the socialists overnight and nearly stopped paying attention to psychology altogether. Fanon's book was one more nail in the coffin of the belief that?psychological understanding alone could be the simple answer to all of my problems, as well as to the problems of others.?I then developed an interest in whether there were any general laws to describe the direction that society takes, where we have been as a society, where we were going, and what socialism really was.????As my curiosity about socialism developed, I felt frustrated over not being able to find a satisfactory definition, so I eventually did something I never thought I would have the guts to do, which was to break with a previous prejudice against people who stood on street corners and handed out leaflets. I began a search for representatives of the socialist ideal, which is what took me to that demonstration outside Boston City Hall. When I finished reading what I had gotten there, perhaps it was the simple socialist message and the sense of deep historical roots that appealed to me, but having little to lose, I decided to see what I could learn at the advertised?SLP study class.????In retrospect, my experience with the?SLP?was, in a sense, a repeat of my experience with psychology. I became infatuated with the first bit of socialist truth at the age of 30 as I had with the first bit of psychological truth I discovered at the age of 21. A more careful analysis brought out the differences between classical and the radical psychology, and on the other hand, between the various shades of socialism. An educational process occurred in both cases.????With that brief introduction, let's proceed to the period of my active involvement with the?Party.?PART ONE: THE MOSTLY FOLKSY AND GOSSIPY PARTEarly Involvement???The back of the?Weekly People?newspaper carried an ad for a?study class?60 miles north of where I lived. So, I gathered my courage, overcame my shyness and prejudice against socialists and communists, and began attending the?study class, which quickly became an unbreakable habit. At my first introduction to the works of Marx, Engels, De Leon and others, I felt quite a bit like a subversive, as if I was doing something that society didn't approve of. I also found myself having to face up to much of what I had been taught in grade school, which had been to fear and despise Marx and every other socialist and communist. I grew up in the McCarthy witch-hunt era, but was totally unconscious of its significance at the actual time. To find myself, years later, studying what socialists and communists had actually written was a bit on the subversive side for me, full of intrigue and even a bit shameful. Those negative feelings eventually gave way to appreciation, as I grew to feel more at home with my?study class?element and became aware that they were not much different from anyone else, but rather were tuned in to an ostensible philosophy of social harmony. I began to feel that it was ignorance that prejudiced others against socialism, but, back in my usual environments, my newly evolving socialist ideas did not find a welcome audience, but neither was I overly harassed about it as long as I didn't proselytize.????Having been bitten hard by the socialist bug, I proceeded to buy?SLP?literature, and continued to attend?study classes?regularly. I learned quite a bit about economics and the struggle over the product of?labor, but remained confused about some aspects of socialist politics. I wondered a little why Marx, Engels, and De Leon were permissible to study, but more modern revolutionaries, such as Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh were not, as though they were taboo or boycotted, which disappointed me a little, but only a little, as the ignorance I remained in remained somewhat blissful, since I was very glad to learn the many things that seemed perfectly valid.????The?SLP?depicted their?program?as?based on modern conditions in industrially advanced America, while other parties supposedly?based their programs on conditions in less-developed countries, such as Russia or China. We were told how?thoroughly American the Party program was, and how?good-old American know-how had built a program free of Old-World prejudices and extraneous influences.?At that early stage of my socialist consciousness, that aspect of the?program?had a certain appeal. But, there was also something about its depiction that alienated me a little. For a while, I wondered how much I was going to have to consciously resist feeling "proud to be an American", for the feeling was so similar to the one I got listening to politicians carrying on about?how wonderful it is to live?in the good old USA. I felt the walls close in a little when I reminded myself that I had never been very far out of the USA, and that I?wanted?to learn more about the experiences of workers from Europe and elsewhere to see if there were any lessons to be learned from them. I was also puzzled over having been handed the impression that?Engels was inferior to Marx in some respects, and that?one of Marx's sons-in-law had a less than noble character.???Another disappointment for me was that the?SLP program?for change, or?Socialist Industrial Union?(SIU), did not seem so easy to memorize, and eventually had to be learned by rote. Basically,?the SIU is an organizational structure into which workers should organize?in order to carry out a revolution in a thoroughgoing and peaceful manner.?During an election, the working class would vote for SLP candidates, but, instead of taking power in the government, the Party would dissolve both the government and itself, and the Industrial Unions would carry on the?administration of production?rather than boss people around.?They told me that?the program was based upon all that was good in?Marxism, andappropriate to industrially advanced countries, which sounded good to me.????I was so impressed by the people I met at the?class?that I thought that they must all have been genii. Their words seemed imbued with such awesome intellect and profundity that I didn't think I could ever aspire to speaking the same way. For quite a few months, I was totally thrilled with the new people I was with, and with what I was learning, such as how?some old-timers spoke from soap-boxes during the Great Depression of the Thirties.?Whatever little flaws I might have wanted to criticize seemed to be well compensated by the rather forthright analysis of economics, the?class struggle, the?materialist conception of history, and the instructor's fascinating stories. Eventually, after maybe a year, thestudy class?seemed to become repetitive, and I even got a little bored at times, but I stuck with it and attended a few open?Party functions, and helped the?Party?to "agitate", which meant distributing leaflets and older issues of the?Weekly People.????As I drew ever closer to the?Party, I was also told that?all other alleged socialist or radical parties had been promulgated by the authorities to?"confuse and confound"?the working classes, and were actually run by the police.?Other than those from the?SLP, most writers were portrayed as?falsifiers of?Marxist theories, with very few exceptions. That was intriguing to learn, and it tempted me to feel that?any party that would warn me about other parties like that would never lie to me. It certainly helped to keep me a certain distance away from the other groups, though I allowed myself to reserve a few doubts about the veracity of everything I was told. I sometimes even felt a desire to communicate with other groups at various times to find out what they were all about.????In general, though, I overlooked what few little things I didn't like, figuring that?any party that could communicate all of the fascinating things they did so well had to have everything else all altogether in just the right proportions. I tended to blame myself for anything that I could not understand, and felt that?whatever I could not readily accept from the Party?was probably due to my own weaknesses. I wanted to learn so much more about this new outlook and philosophy that had such exciting possibilities for social change.????After maybe six months of?study class, I became aware that followers of the?Party?could be divided into members and non-members, and I soon began to aspire to membership. But, because I had so little self confidence about my abilities to espouse the finer points of the?Party program, I didn't ask about joining for yet another six months. When I finally did get around to ask about joining, I was encouraged to apply with more enthusiasm than what I expected. So, I practiced and acquired a meager skill in expressing the basic principles of?Socialist Industrial Unionism, and that was sufficient to enable me to pass the test. I thanked my lucky stars that the exam wasn't as rigorous as I had feared. Though I wanted so much to belong to the revolution, my lack of self-confidence combined with my burnout and lack of sense of self-worth made me doubt any possible usefulness I might have for the revolution, but I eventually became a member early in 1973. I remember the feeling of pride I had while driving home, combined with a sense of amazement that any group would accept me into its ranks.????There was a period of time when I was so absorbed with the study of socialism and?Party literature?that it was like riding a crest of ecstasy. I made it a task to record the?SLP study course?onto cassette tapes, for that technology was finally becoming available on a mass basis. For quite a few weeks, I took the time to lay down on tape a considerable number of the pamphlets associated with the?study course, which I later listened to while riding around in my car. At the end of the?study course, however, came the reading of a pamphlet by Arnold Petersen entitled "Marxism vs. Soviet Despotism". I remember getting close to the end of recording that pamphlet, and then becoming so disenchanted that I even developed a positive distaste for it, but I didn't know anywhere near enough about my subject to enable me to develop a cogent argument against it. I told my?study class instructor?a little about how I felt about the pamphlet, but he only assured me?what a wonderful pamphlet it was, just as wonderful as all of the other things that A.P. had written.That had a devastating effect on me, as I then became sure that?the source of my disenchantment was my own inadequacies as a socialist, or as a human being.?But, sufficiently satisfied with having gotten the basics down, I stopped taping the study course and began to enjoy the fruits of my labor. But I remained considerably disappointed in my inability to readily accept and take to heart everything I was reading and hearing.????Sometime after joining the?Party, one of the things I had often wondered about came to have a greater importance than before, viz., the?Party's near total lack of youth. I observed young people agitating for other parties, but wondered why they weren't in?my?Party. Even I was all of 30 back then, and I no longer considered myself to be truly young. At the study class, there was only one other person of my approximate age, but he hardly ever attended. I was somewhat comforted later on by the fact that a few other people my age joined the?study class, and they stuck with it consistently enough to also become interested in joining. The?Party?seemed interested in them as well, and they joined up the month after I did. It was really nice to be friends with them, and we spent quite a bit of time together.????At one of our?monthly Section meetings, some of the newcomers got to talking with one of the long-term members about our concerns for the?Party. We voiced a curiosity (that I had learned to suppress) about where?SLP philosophy?fit into the spectrum of socialist philosophy. Amazingly enough, the long-term member told us that?the Party had been accused by others as having an anarcho-syndicalist program. That statement really snowed me, as I had no idea what that meant, and I had no idea about how or where I could check into it further. But, I also got the feeling that to even want to know more about that subject was not welcome. When I couched those concerns in general form for consideration by our?study class?instructor as a topic for him to pursue, he replied that: "Part of the program of the SLP is to study the programs of other parties", but it remained an unfulfilled promise, for I can't remember learning anything else about any other?leftist?party in that?class.????At some point, another group of young people began to attend our?study class, but we found it unusual that they expressed great interest in?becoming members immediately, claiming a previous?long-term knowledge of our philosophy, but granting instant admission didn't seem possible. I couldn't imagine any one group accepting another group into their midst without first determining their mutual compatibility. Because of their appearance, they also didn't readily fit in with the "professional demeanor" of the rest of the members. They complained that?the commute to our regular study class was too long for people of little means, so they suggested that?the study class go to them. In order to accommodate them, I seem to remember one or more?study classes?held outside of the normal one, after which point they put more pressure on us to be admitted as members. Bowing to the pressure, I uneasily agreed to vote for their admission at our next?Section meeting.????At that meeting, one of the elder members who had never before met the new candidates took me aside and asked me if I really knew that much about them, which I interpreted as pressure to not admit them. On the horns of a dilemma, I succumbed to the pressure, and when the vote finally came down, I tipped the vote against them. This created a bit of a protest from them and the other new members, but the damage was done, and mostly to my own credibility. So, in a confusing compromise, I agreed to attend a few more extra-curricular?study classes?to get to know them better, but, by then, I already knew much more about them than the members who really needed to get to know them. But, when I went the forty miles to conduct the next?class, they instead were interested only in finding out why I had voted against them, and then proceeded to so earnestly pursue the subject that I felt intimidated, outnumbered, and uncomfortable enough to excuse myself early. When it came time for the next?study class, I no longer was able to find them at home, so everything was dropped, but without much regret, and not without considerable relief.????I had another major conflict with my?Section. Prior to officially joining, I had started meeting with a group of people near the home turf who produced their own?newsletter?and concerned themselves with?labor?issues. At factory gates, I occasionally assisted them in distributing literature that chronicled?labor?struggles and local politics, but it also took a very non-ideological stance in the process, not much more than facts and complaints. I appointed myself to inject the missing socialist ideological element, but the leadership rebuffed my socialist propagandizing efforts altogether, claiming to have had?enough experience with various parties in the past. I wondered why they weren't able to discern that 'my Party was different, and I had the truth with me at all times.' They also had a storefront in a run-down district, but wouldn't let me put my?Party literature?where anyone could see it, much to my dismay. They also held community meetings at which all I could think about was what I would say about socialism if I had the opportunity to speak about it, but socialism just didn't seem to be anywhere near anyone else's agenda. I spent a lot of time feeling as though I had the answer to everyone's problems, combined with too little self-confidence to deliver it.????After I became a member, I was as yet unaware as to how my activities with the home turf group would be perceived by the?Party, and when I proudly reported my activities to my?Section, I was quite dismayed to find that, instead of being praised for being active, my efforts were condemned, and I was ordered to?cease those activities immediately! Furthermore, I was amazed at the intensity of the reproach I received. It was as though I had?violated some fundamental rule?of which I had insufficient awareness. What I had done was apparently?very wrong, even?according to the Party Constitution, and I was ordered to?cut off all contact with the home turf group altogether. The members proceeded to convey the impression that?all other groups were agents of the state, paid to lead the working class astray, and that I would taint myself if I continued associating with them.?But, having taken the work of the home-turf group at face value, I could hardly believe that?they could have been any sort of agents. To me,?they were as innocent as babes in the woods who needed to learn about socialism.????My?Comrades?seemed to have had their reasons why?members should not associate with other organizations.?I guessed that they must have included fears that?SLP members might be swayed by the "false ideology" of other organizations, or maybe it was that?association with other organizations might be?"harmful to the?Party" in some undefined way. I found it difficult to imagine what kind of revolution a party would be capable of facilitating if its members were not able to mix in with other groups or organizations.????During the tirade of my?Comrades, I remember yessing them so that life could return to normal. I did not feel like?I had done such a bad deed, and I was in a hurry for the agony to end, so I pretended to have been?enlightened by them, all the while reserving the right to judge my actions at my own pace. While driving home, I felt that I was actually giving up some of my?freedoms of association?to be a?SLP?member, and I was not very comfortable with that feeling at all. Since the other members of the?Section?lived a considerable distance away from me, they would never know whether or not I agitated among other groups if I didn't tell them so, but that would have been an "unorganizational" thing to do, so I didn't give in to temptation, and merely obeyed rules that I considered to be as invasive as nonsensical.????Since propagandizing other groups was taboo, it seemed that one's only other recourse was to?stand out on a sidewalk and leaflet individuals, which I also did a little of, but there was little satisfaction in this method. Of the hundreds of people I leafletted in this way, I can remember having had only one meaningful conversation.????One of the first big functions I got to attend as a new member was a?State Convention?and banquet. One of my first big anxieties descended when I got elected to some kind of?committee, but it turned out to be a pretty painless experience after all, for they only elected everyone to some kind of a?committee?in order to make sure that no one was left out. So, it was easy enough to let the more experienced members take all of the initiative, and all I had to do for the most part was to sit back and listen. All of the proceedings were very new to me, having never before taken part in what I anticipated would be?a planning session to change the world, but I had little opinion about any kind of revolutionary action at that point. I had previously feared that?I was going to be put to some kind of a test, and that I would have been expected to show some kind of revolutionary initiative, but, fortunately for me, they were much more laid back than that, and no one seemed interested in running me through any kind of revolutionary gauntlet. And, when it was all over, I was amazed at how mundane the proceedings actually turned out to be.????After the banquet and fund-raising parts were all over and we relaxed at our tables, I found myself with a group that included an ex-member who had come to the banquet as the guest of her husband. After we all became more comfortable with each other, she told me that?the SLP would never amount to anything due to all of the disagreements within it, which I found to be an astounding statement, for I didn't think that I could have found a more unified group of people in my whole life. What I also didn't expect was for her to get a little on the vociferous side, while her husband just clammed up altogether and let her talk. Just as I was beginning to think that I was going to learn some kind of astounding hidden secret about the?Party, one of the?Organizers?came over and threw a blanket over the discussion. Previous to that display of passion, the issue of the?Party's lack of youth was all that I ever had to cause me to speculate that something other than what appeared at face value might be going on. After that event, though, I began to wonder about the nature of my?Party?quite a bit more.The Big Move???Not too long after joining up, a letter to the?Sections?from the?National Office?called for volunteers to?help move the NO from Brooklyn, New York to Palo Alto, California.?After this call gestated in my mind for awhile, I began to get really excited about the possibilities that going to New York might open up for me. Travel. Adventure. Maybe even a front-row seat on the revolution. I was very bored at the time with my life as a wage-slave. Up to then, I had tried various jobs, and helping out with the family business didn't really seem much better than other jobs, so I was ready for a big change. Having never been motivated enough to join the rat race like so many of my friends and acquaintances, what with their responsibilities, families, homes, cars, boats, payments, steady jobs, etc., I was still willing to put up with a certain amount of financial uncertainty for the sake of following adventure. I could even be emotional at times and think "To hell with making money!" I regarded the average Joe's life-style with disdain, and doubted if I could have adjusted to such a routine, even though such opportunities had already come my way. My life had already been disrupted by having dropped out of college, so I felt different from the norm, though rare were the times I felt sure enough of the value of those differences to celebrate them. With all of my internal conflicts, it was many times enough of a struggle to remain a functioning wage-slave.????Over the years, I had also spent a certain amount of energy following the few mundane ideals I had, but, as a newly converted socialist, I then had a surplus of ideals. This time, however, it was the revolution that beckoned, and I was becoming increasingly determined to follow the revolution, at least for a little while, to see where it would lead. So, it was with some trepidation that I pulled up roots once again and abandoned a secure, but not very exciting life, to see what lay beyond the horizon.New York, New York???I never relished the thought of moving to New York, especially in the middle of summer. I absolutely dreaded throwing myself into an environment of smog, crime, crowds, cockroaches, and any number of unknown possibilities. But I knew that it was not going to last for more than the two months of July and August of 1974, after which I would have to figure out what to do next. I was willing to cross that bridge when I got to it, but I was also a little nervous about the bold step I had taken. Bold for me, that is.????I arrived in Brooklyn one hot afternoon and went up to the fifth floor of the industrial style building at 116 Nassau Street and got to meet the?SLP's National Secretary, who took some time from his busy routine to show me around. He briefly introduced me to everyone, and then to the long-time?Party sympathizer?who volunteered to put me up at his place in the Bronx. It wasn't long before I got into a regular work routine, which consisted of a long day's work, after which we would go back to the flat in the Bronx. After a great supper, I would be treated to many a tale of life at sea, or else tales of the?SLP?and the people in and around it. Throughout the summer, I got to meet many of the core people in The Big Apple. At one banquet, I even got to meet Arnold Petersen, whose theorizing figures heavily in much of this book. By that time, A.P. was in his 90's, his hearing was bad, and he didn't look very much in the mood for socializing.????I should mention how I felt being in the same room with the man who led the?SLP?for some fifty-five years or so. Back in the old?study class, a lot of reverence was expressed for the man who had guided the?Party?for so many years. I felt as though I could have used some inspiration from someone, and I felt a certain compulsion to interrogate him as to the secrets of his long and revolutionary life so that I might someday be able to carry on in the grand tradition. On the other hand, I was a little too intimidated to pursue a conversation because I felt unqualified, and without an invitation to crash the club of the exclusive few who got to talk to the great leader. I certainly had no reputation as a fire-brand revolutionary organizer the way they are celebrated in fact and fiction. I had already been rebuffed by so many non-socialists for wanting to talk about socialism that the incessant rejection had already caused me to become shy about bringing up what had become an all-too-pressing agenda item in my conversations. I feared being considered a fanatic of some sort, for not much could be worse to a reputation than that, I thought. But, in spite of my suspected fanaticism, I had yet to be responsible for bringing in a single new member to the?Party, and had yet to be responsible for passing out a ton of leaflets. So, except for my enthusiasm, I felt as though I had few credentials with which to start a conversation with a great man. But, in his condition of rather advanced old age, he was not very gregarious either, and seemed rather content to be attended by one of the?NO?workers who seemed to have known him for a long time.????In spite of that failure to connect with the great old leader, I was still quite excited about being near the heart of the?Party, even if I wasn't learning all that much about it. And, it was still a relief to be there in New York rather than fixing cars, even if I wasn't making any money, which wasn't all that unusual for me. The?Party?had agreed to reimburse only my direct expenses, so I was careful to save all receipts for food, gas and whatever else I had to buy at the time, and turn them in now and then for reimbursement.????While in New York, I hoped that I would also be able to learn something about the?Party's history and satisfy my curiosity as to why the?Party?was so small despite its many claims of?greatness, as propagated in its own?literature. I never felt comfortable asking direct questions about those matters for fear that it was not the way to get the answers I wanted so badly. I was so afraid of alienating people with questions that they went largely unasked as I struggled in vain to find diplomatic ways to find out what I wanted. In one attempt, I got myself invited to a?NEC Subcommittee meeting, but I barely remember a thing about it, other than remaining somewhat bored throughout, but I did meet five important members I had never met before.????As time passed, I gradually developed a sense for who was who around the?NO, and what was what. I observed how people interacted to get some idea of what was going on, and some of it seemed a little odd. Before not too long, the atmosphere seemed quite far from being that of?just one big happy family. For example, shouting matches between personnel broke out more than once.????I got to know a few workers at the?NO?on a slightly more than superficial level, and I got the feeling that some of them were not very happy working there. Out in the industrial area, where I worked maybe half the time, three paid employees, two of whom were members, printed the?Weekly People, the leaflets, pamphlets,?NEC Reports,?internal Party correspondence, etc. Changes in printing technology were going to make the printers redundant when we moved West, so none of the three printers were planning to move with the?NO, and I had the feeling that none of them were too unhappy over losing their jobs, either.????I spent most of the other half of the time in the shipping department. The shipping clerk had a job that was definitely transportable to the other side of the country, but he was of no mind to move out West either. I never learned too much about the source of his discontent, but one day I was shocked to hear that he thought that?Party?literature was"bullshit". After the initial shock of hearing what seemed an absurd statement, I dismissed it as just another symptom of his seeming disgruntlement, and tried not to show my disappointment in him. But, his comment disturbed me, and I wondered how he could have felt so much contempt for the literature that had so captivated my interest. I asked myself if it was a personal grievance, stupidity, or what??It certainly could not have been based on the truth of the situation, thought I.????Some corners of the?NO?were off limits to people of my talents, so I didn't get to know the intellectual half of the workers very well, and, in some cases, not at all. What with so much work to do, and then having to commute for an hour and a half each way on worn-out public transportation, and then supper and bedtime, the schedule didn't allow for much exploration. One of the few things that I learned was that?the Party couldn't attract people to come to a place like New York City to write for the Weekly People, but there were a few who were willing to go out West to write in a nicer environment.?I estimated that about half of the New York staff made the move out to the West Coast.????Quite a few members and sympathizers came from all over the country to help out at the?NO?as well I. We got to work together quite a bit in our mutual tasks of packing up all the stuff to go out West, and in scrapping tons of lead from the obsolete printing operations. The?Party?also had to get rid of a ton of old literature and other memorabilia from times gone by. Not all was lost, however, for a sampling of all the "treasures" continued throughout the summer by an archivist from the?Wisconsin State Historical Society, which is well known for its collection of socialist histories. But still, a surfeit of literature and stuff?simply had to be dumped. Once I found out what was going on, and to prevent too much waste from occurring, I made it a point of going through the dumpster at the end of each day to get a sampling for myself and posterity. I also wondered why it took so long for anyone to tell me that?precious history was simply being discarded, and I never found out how much stuff had simply been tossed before I had a chance to sample it.????What with keeping so busy, it wasn't long before July and August of '74 were over and done with, and along with the passage of those two months of hard, sweaty work, my reasons for remaining in New York had also come to an end. Once again, however, I found myself in an uncertain position of not knowing exactly what to do with the rest of my life. I didn't really want to go back where I came from, since I felt that I had burned a few bridges behind me. So, I inquired of the?NS?if there was going to be any need for help to set up the new?National Office?in Palo Alto. He indicated an?interest in my continued assistance?and agreed to?continue to pay my expenses for the duration of our venture, which was estimated?to last maybe a month or so. When it was to come to an end, that would be the end of my little "job", and I would once again be on my own. But at least I was to have an expense-paid trip to California, the only way I ever could have gotten there.????After the last edition of the?Weekly People?rolled off the old press and got wrapped and mailed, I made one more trip back home to pick up what I thought I would need for the long drive to the West coast, and for what I hoped might turn into a fairly long stay.To the West, at Last???Ever since the mid-60's, I had dreamed about going to California, so this new adventure was like a dream come true for me. I finally had a place to go to, and something to do when I got there. On the way out, I dropped off what seemed like a ton of salvaged literature on the?Labor History?department of a Rhode Island College. Then it was off to the West. Aside from getting a lousy speeding ticket, it was very exciting for me to be anywhere west of Ohio for the first time. After recovering from road fatigue after the nearly five days' drive from coast to coast, the new?NO?was searched for and found. Those who had flown out had already started remodeling, and had torn down a few walls, etc. Having acquired a few mechanical skills in my early years, I took on the tasks of putting together lots of steel shelving and storage cabinets, etc., and, for the first time in my life, I also got to do a little indoor electrical work with a member who happened to be an electrician.????During the first few weeks, people came from all over the Bay Area and the rest of the country to help set things up. Everything had to be reorganized, new addresses stamped on all of the literature, and tons of stuff moved into final resting places, etc. Sometime after the initial panic over moving in and getting organized had subsided, the?National Secretary?threw a little picnic-party for everyone in the big open space at the back of the plant. As we ate, chatted, and joked around, some of the heretical humorous leanings of the bright, young intellectual staff had already made an impression on me, and though I cannot remember at all what we were talking about, I cracked a joke that caused the?NS?to respond with, "There?is?going to be another disruption in the Socialist Labor Party". His statement certainly surprised me.???Before long, the new shipping clerk decided to quit, so I eagerly volunteered to take his place. When my offer to fill the gap was accepted, I was in seventh heaven because I felt as though I was finally going to be in a position to find out how a revolutionary organization ticked. But, when I started working for the?Party?and "got onto its payroll", I thought that it was at least somewhat strange that a revolutionary party would sign me up for the same kinds of?withholding taxes?and other deductions that any other company would. It was a relation to the government that I thought was a little too close to be revolutionary. How could a?Party?that seemed so interested in?getting rid of the present day state?be so blasé about?getting rid of the financial basis of that state? But, I did not have a legal mind, and simply blamed the government for imposing rules. And, because everyone else in the?NO?was in the same boat as I, but did not complain, I didn't pursue the issue.????At the same time that I was so enthusiastic about the new job, I was also suddenly panicked over the thought of how short-handed I would soon be, because I was then going to have to be trained in how to do all of the shipping clerk tasks, as well as build a bunch of bookshelves and do all of the other moving-in tasks that were still undone. A lot of the help that arrived to greet us had slowly dribbled away to practically nil. To get all of the work done, I worked nights, days, and weekends well into the following year of 1975. Since I felt that the extra work was appreciated, I didn't mind the extra grind so much, though it did get a bit lonely at times, especially when someone would complain that theirfavorite project wasn't being completed as fast as?they?would have liked, but they weren't exactly helping to get any of it done.Settling In???As time marched on, the major projects managed to get done, and I was gradually freed from the overload of work I had taken on. If I had considered the work of the revolution to have been "just another job", I never would have done the work that I did and the way that I did it, seemingly driven as though by an obsession. I felt as though?I was working to speed the day of the revolution, and if I did a good job, the pain and suffering of myself and the world would be terminated that much earlier, even though I sometimes doubted the validity of the emotion that was carrying me along. But, I also could not understand why none of the others were as enthusiastic as I was, and I admit that I was a little disappointed in what seemed like their 9-5 attitudes.????As time passed, I also became somewhat disappointed with the position of shipping clerk, as I was stuck primarily in the rear of the building filling?book and leaflet orders?and preparing?Weekly People?mailings. It began to look as though the only time that I would get to interact with others was when they came downstairs to get a cup of coffee, bring me a shipping order, or, on Fridays, help me wrap the?Weekly People. If someone had their finger on the pulse of the?Party, that person certainly wasn't I. It got quite lonely back there, and it rapidly seemed to turn out to be not that much different from all the other non-fulfilling kinds of work I was used to doing, i.e., working with things, rather than with people. My questions about what was really going on in the?Party?were still not being answered. I found myself to be just another cog in the wheel, and it began to get boring.????Most of the time, unless there was a?Section?meeting or some other?Party?event,?NO?employees went home, enjoyed family life, or did whatever they did, while I wondered why we weren't spending our spare time plotting the revolution. I guessed that for many of my fellow employees, life away from work meant seeking entertainment and/or just living a rather plain old working class existence. It seemed as though the work of the revolution was to be done during normal working hours, and aside from those?40 hours per week, we were free to do whatever we wanted, just like ordinary wage-slaves. That was disappointing, as I had expected that, as part of the?National Office?of a supposedly revolutionary party, my?Comrades?and I would be?plotting the revolution 24 hours a day. But, that wasn't the way it was, so, on weekends, since there was little else to do, I often took off in my car for a drive to the hills, coast and rural areas that surrounded the Bay Area, and got to take in some scenery that I found to be a wonderful contrast to that of the East Coast. To this day, that aspect of my life back then remains a highlight.Things to Think About???On one occasion, one of the intellectuals and I went to a public confab to listen to a well-known writer for a?Maoist?publication give a speech. While other attendees in the audience were proud to publicly announce their affiliations during Q and A, the?WP?writer did not mention the?SLP?at all when he made his comment/question, so I asked "why not" after we departed, and he said something to the effect: 'After the revolution, those people are going to kill us.' I was so shocked by that statement that I was afraid to pursue it any further, as though I should content myself with having learned that much but no more. I also wondered about what kind of a reactionary movement I had joined that could inspire such wrath by other parties, a wrath that seemed to go far beyond ordinary rivalry between competing radical groups.????On another occasion, the?Weekly People?ran an article that included a small picture of a well-known member of another?left-wing?party, and when the?NS?saw the picture, he scrapped the whole?edition, had it redone all over again, and we all worked late one night to get the new one into the mail. When I wondered what the big deal was, it was explained that?some members would have interpreted the printing of that picture as a tacit endorsement of the other party. Some members might have been angered enough to diminish their support, or otherwise raise a big stink.?I had heard a few stories about competition and antagonism between?leftist parties, but was unprepared for the kind of expense to which the?Party?had to go to prevent references to certain individuals or parties from showing up in its journal.????As time went on, others in the?NO?began to sense the need for community, so a?study class?was organized. There I learned that, unlike the 'old guard' of the?Party, the younger intellectuals didn't feel it necessary to condemn Lenin, Mao, and every other revolutionary in every other sentence that they wrote or spoke, which was somewhat of a discomforting and confusing surprise to me. I never really understood why so many revolutionaries had to be condemned so harshly by the?SLP?anyhow, but now I was in a group that didn't find it necessary to do so, and I had no frame of reference with which to judge what was correct. The exposure to a?study class?that dared to stray from what was considered safe material for?SLP?members intrigued me, and I was even encouraged to?keep an open mind.????A long time before, in conversations with one of the?WP?writers back in New York, I had begun to sense that I really didn't know very much about anything socialist, and that my tendency to parrot old?Party sayings?would not merit automatic acceptance with the relatively young intellectual crowd. So, in order to be better accepted among the crowd of intellectuals that I was respecting more and more, and even wanted to be considered a part of, I felt a need to get a lot of tools with which to attain this new goal of obtaining a certain amount of intellectual acumen, so I started buying books. First, I got the?Collected Works?of Mao Tse-Tung. Then I got a book by Ho Chi Minh and one by General Giap. I really enjoyed the latter two, for they proved to me how much these revolutionary fighters really loved their countries and their people, as opposed to the?self-serving kinds of authoritarian attitudes?that some?Party?members attributed to them. When I decided to test the waters and brought up the subject of Ho Chi Minh to a member of the?old guard, she said flatly that?Ho Chi Minh was a dictator! Having read Ho Chi Minh, I was shocked by this statement. I had heard the intellectuals criticize the?old guard?as?dogmatic, but this "dictator" reaction to me went beyond?dogmatism. It was a level of condemnation that I could not understand at all, nor where it was coming from. But, having little understanding of my own from which to argue, I could do little more than hold back my tongue.????On the other hand, I could talk to the intellectuals about things even as controversial as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" without being put down as a traitor to some?Party position?of which I had little knowledge or understanding. When the?Weekly People?writers admitted the plausibility of a?dictatorship of the proletariat?in the USA, I was surprised at first that they would actually contradict the views of the rest of the?Party, but they consistently did so only in private conversation. A certain amount of trust had developed between us, based, I presumed, on my willingness to develop my intellect so as to be more able to appreciate their perspectives, including the perspective that?the Party needed a lot of education and change.?At the same time, I sensed a certain reluctance on their part to openly contradict the beliefs of the general membership, but had no idea why that was so."Bullshit!"???If the statement about Ho Chi Minh was strange, it did not prepare me for a statement that was even more strange, but from a totally different direction. Back at my worktable one day, surrounded by?SLP?literature, something simply unforgettable happened: One of the?WP?writers approached my workspace and exclaimed, "It's bullshit, all bullshit!" I was dumbfounded, having never heard anything as seemingly heretical from someone whom I respected as having learned his subject far more in depth than I, and probably more than most others in this world. In my bewilderment, it took a long time before I would even admit to myself that he had to have been talking about the literature that I so lovingly wrapped and sent out to the world every day. I didn't know whether to be outraged at the seeming heresy, or to tell someone about it, or what. I thought about it for a long time, and it reminded me of how isolated I was, as though the people around me were speaking a language I couldn't understand.????After working in such ignorance for what seemed too long, I started to become more resentful of the bureaucratic nature of the?NO organizational structure. All?Party knowledge?seemed to be concentrated in the hands of the?NS, and heaven forbid if a letter was misdirected to someone who shouldn't have opened it. One of my daily duties was to pick up mail from the?Post Office?every morning. At first, I used to take it all up to the?NS?and dump it in a big pile on his desk. After doing it like that for awhile, I asked if I could sort it out downstairs to help save him some time, and he agreed. That worked all right until the day I made a mistake and an important letter was opened by the wrong person and some bleep hit the fan, and then it was back to the old way of doing things. Of course, I never inquired too deeply into the nature of the consequences of my innocent error, because I had developed respect for the compartmentalization of duties, even though I resented it. I could feel, on the one hand, that it was none of my business, but on the other hand, that I had a right to know, since I was a?NO?employee and a?Party?member. But, since I had no idea how to solve this conflict, all I could do was to try to forget about it.????As time went on, my curiosity continued to be unsatisfied about why we were such a tiny?Party?if our?SIU program?was as perfect as we said?it was, and if we were as great a?Party?we always boasted?we were. I still wanted to know why the members were so old and why there were hardly any youngsters among us. These were a part of a set of gnawing questions for me, questions to which I couldn't seem to get any straight or satisfying answers, and I wondered if I would ever find any. Some of the other things that I also wondered about included: 1) What happened in the disruption I had heard about in?Section?Palo Alto in 1968; and 2) How could the?Party?claim that?what happened in Vietnam made no difference to the American working class? Why did the?Party?seem to completely fail to celebrate the Vietnamese victory over American aggression and genocide? People mourned the 50,000 Americans who died over there, but it was years before I even heard about the one or two million Vietnamese who died.????Not long after arriving in the Bay Area, I found myself tuning my radio to?KPFA's?Pacifica Radio?outlet in Berkeley - due to the eclectic, unpredictable and common-people orientation of the programming, and I gradually became a steady listener. As I began to talk up my listening experience among the members, I found out that?KPFA?was considered by some of them to be?as much or more of a left-wing organization as it was an information outlet, and, as such, it was viewed as?a competing interest, or even as one of those?police-corrupted tools of the state?that the whole rest of the?left?was supposed to be part of. Some of the local members had many times tried bringing the?Party?message to the attention of the?Radio?programmers with little success, and seemed to be boycotting the station in retribution. Later, I was so moved by one of?KPFA's money-raising pitches, that I subscribed to that listener-sponsored station, taking a chance that no one in the?Party?would find out. I only told one of the?WP?writers whom I trusted, for, had the information fallen into the hands of the wrong members, it was conceivable that they might have considered bringing me up on charges for having sent money to an organization other than the?Party.????Over?KPFA's airwaves, I remember hearing the unrestrained joy of the progressive community at the news of the?defeat of America by the Vietnamese, and I remember feeling so much in tune with?that?emotion compared to the seemingly complete lack of emotion on the part of?SLP?members. Even on the part of the intellectuals, I don't particularly remember much celebration either. Though what they wrote may have represented somewhat of a?breakthrough in thought for the Party, it didn't seem like much of a breakthrough for me. But, at least they had established a climate at the?NO?in which the knee-jerk vilification of nearly everyone who came after Marx, Engels and De Leon, and who had a profound effect on world history, was at an end, or closer to the end. It was as though the reservoir of those who were willing to fondly remember, rehash and reprint the old formulas every week had finally dried up. With the new crowd, I got the feeling that they were still willing to rehash the old formulas, but weren't willing to do it as fondly as those they replaced. Perhaps even reluctantly, as indicated by the "Bullshit!" statement.The 1975?National?Executive?Committee Session???The?NEC?at that time was a ten-member elected body representing ten geographical regions within the country, roughly corresponding to the 10 major?Postal Zip-Code?regions. Theoretically, the?NEC?was the directing power within the?Party?between?National Conventions, but one of the intellectuals told me that?the NEC had historically served as a mere rubber stamp for the wishes of the National Secretary. Not long after the?NO?settled down in the Bay Area, an annual?NEC Session?was due, and this time it was held in San Francisco.????One of the intellectuals had previously intimated that?the NEC had been allowing situations to build up that threatened the continued existence of the NO and the Party.?On hearing that, and having trained my ears to take cues from the intellectuals, I then suspected that?the NEC members might even be traitors to the Party. I remembered mailing out many a thick envelope of paperwork to them, but the?NS?never seemed very happy with the responses he got back.????At the?NEC Session, the?National Secretary?brought up the subject of "the state of crisis" within the?National Office?that the move to the West Coast was supposed to have alleviated. By virtue of the move, the?NO?was supposed to be?acquiring more help from members who had been unwilling to go to New York. But, the?Weekly People?still had noEditor, save for the overworked?NS?himself, and?the office and writing staffs were still short-handed. Secondly, the membership was still?declining in numbers, and the?NS?seemed quite serious when he drove home the facts about?the decline of the?Party.????At the?Session, the?NEC?members questioned the validity of the?WP?article on the Vietnamese victory. The?NEC?took exception to the attachment of?a progressive coloring to the Vietnamese victory over the USA, so the?NS?had to spend quite a bit of time defending the?WP?writers. It was there that I believe I heard the expression "national chauvinism" being attached to the views of the?NEC?and some of the members.????The relatively new crop of intellectuals had always expressed a considerable degree of contempt for the intellectual capacity of the membership - and even that of the?NEC?- to discuss matters of revolutionary theory. At this?Session, the?NS?declared that: "the?Party?had made mistakes and had to engage in collective criticism to rectify the situation". This statement really aroused my curiosity, and I couldn't wait to engage in the process of "criticism and self-criticism" so that the?Party?could at last begin to?openly discuss theory, and I might finally get to participate, or at least pick up on some new ideas.????One troublesome item for me at that time was the problem of the?Party's credibility within the?progressive movement, especially with regard to our failure to protest the criminally insane?war?that we waged in Vietnam. In general, the?Party?seemed not to care very much about what the American government was doing to that little country. Instead, they claimed that?what happened in Vietnam made no difference to the interests of American workers. This argument was very disappointing to me, but seemed plausible at the time, considering the theoretical vacuum I was in.????I frequently heard members refer to "the interests of the?Party", but only rarely did they mention anything about?interests of working and oppressed classes. The only time I can recall members discussing the effects of some policy on "the interests of the American workers" was with regard to the?war?in Vietnam, and to them it was supposed to?not?make any difference. Having been relatively unaware of principles of?international working class solidarity?at the time,?solidarity?not being one of the?Party's hot buttons, I had yet to learn to actively suggest that?American workers should take an activist role in affecting foreign relations, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters in Vietnam.?All I had at the time were my gut feelings, and I had never been taught to trust them. Perhaps trusting them had gotten me into too much trouble in the past. The position of?strict neutrality on every member's part?was not very comfortable for me because I had a strong opinion on the matter, but that opinion could not be openly expressed within the?Party, and it would have been "unorganizational" to have joined other demonstrations in order to express it.????I had no idea about where the?Party's attitude to the Vietnam?war?had come from, whether it was?official, scientific, the result of some kind of prejudice, or what. Whatever the source of reluctance to support the Vietnamese, neither could the?SLP?stand up for American aggression, so there wasn't much for a member to do who wanted something positive to happen, except to hope that?a box of SLP leaflets would reach the Vietnamese, and they would learn to overthrow their oppressors of whatever national origin by organizing into Socialist Industrial Unions.Section?Santa Clara???What with so many of us newly transplanted?NO?workers living near the new?headquarters?in Santa Clara County, it wasn't too long before we decided to form a?Section?of our own. We certainly had enough members to create a quorum, and many of us were tired of the rather long trip up into San Francisco territory, into which?Section?most of us, if not all, had transferred our membership upon arriving in the Bay Area. I think that some of the?NO?staffers had also had quite enough of the influence of some of the older members of?Section?S.F. as well. Aside from the usual?Party business activities of Section meetings, picnics, banquets, leafletting, etc., there didn't seem to be that much for the newcomers and the old-timers to talk about together. It wasn't very long before the intellectuals even began to seemingly boycott those?Section?S.F. meetings, though I and a few others from the Peninsula continued to attend them, but with increasing distaste, especially on my part.???After having gone to enough of those?Section?S.F. meetings, I became increasingly aware of the?communications gap between the older members and the intellectuals, and it troubled me that, in spite of so many revolutionary interests in common, the self-described "only revolutionaries in the world" had so little to talk to each other about. It seemed like there was very little to get excited about in those meetings, unless one was on a?working committee?and maybe a new member came along once in a decade and one could plot and scheme and perhaps get the new member to take over another member's work. I remember the sinking feeling I got when I was elected into the?newsstand repair committee?- a committee of one. Such an honor.????Having learned to buy into the attitude that?the communications gap between the intellectuals and the older members was irreconcilable, and having half-heartedly learned to mock a denigrating attitude toward the older members, I found more time to speculate about the dwindling of the?Party. I used to joke (among very few others) that the success of our movement could be compared to the "Hundredth Monkey" theory, where?all the?SLP?had to do was to blitz the masses with enough leaflets by which a critical mass of informed workers would emerge to organize the rest into Socialist Industrial Unions.?That would have simplified the revolution and the work of the?Party. I also had a recurring vision of the revolutionary moment when "the masses"?would come down the street in a state of confused agitation and would luckily stumble on a SLP picnic. The speaker would interrupt his normal speech and tell everyone to organize into SIUs so that the revolution could begin.?With theories like this, it's easy to see that I was becoming a little restless and bored.????None of our activities seemed very revolutionary to me. After leafletting the first few times, I got to thinking how much I hated it and what a waste of time it was.?The masses were hostile and disinterested, etc., and it wasn't long before I wouldn't leaflet by myself anymore. Another factor of my aversion to leafletting was its seeming resemblance to begging, panhandling, or even to some kind of public perversion. A negative attitude was instilled in me at an early age against people who hung around street corners and made nuisances of themselves. They were simply to be avoided and ignored. I certainly was willing to make an exception if we were in an actual revolutionary situation, when people would be on the streets eagerly seeking information. Putting leaflets in the door handles of cars, or servicing the news racks weren't quite as obnoxious forms of activities as leafletting, but not many other?SLP?"revolutionary"?activities?appealed to me. To me, there was no joy in leafletting, and it was mostly downright depressing. Guilt over seeing others do it was my only motivation for getting out there and joining in. Since the others were doing a good job in at least pretending that?they were having a good time, I tried not to demoralize them by grumbling too loudly.????With all of the frustration that was building up, what helped sustain my patience was the reading I was doing outside of?SLP?literature. I bought the?45 volumes?of Lenin and started reading those in my spare time. I developed a real respect for those who, to one degree or another, had success in leading their people away from the yoke of colonial or imperialist aggression. As I warmed to the seeming honesty and consistency of?Leninist?philosophy, a mere sympathy with it was not enough to convince me to discard the?Party's SIU program. It had only weakly occurred to me at the time that I might someday be willing to reject it, for the more I learned about other revolutions, the more I began to wonder about the relation between those revolutions and the?SLP's program?for change, due to the rather obvious differences in scenarios.A Trip Back East???What with my having been out West for almost a year, it was time to go back East to visit friends and relatives, and pick up more clothes and stuff from home. I timed my return to coincide with an?end of the summer gathering?of my old?Comrades?back East. At the?gathering, word spread that I?had been working at the?NO, so I was asked to speak about my experiences. With considerable anxiety, I tried as best as I could to make my mundane experiences seem interesting. But, I was not an experienced speaker, and there was something that was bothering me, about which I could speak only with members,?internal Party affairs having to remain within our small circle, so I was unable to come right out with what was on my mind.????In my working environment at the?NO, the rift that I detected between the views of the intellectuals and those of the members out in the field was not a topic to which I had given much thought, but hanging around with the intellectuals throughout the previous year had inculcated within me a new and denigrating attitude toward the intellectual capacities of the rank-and-file out in the field, as though?they were intellectually stunted?somehow, or, as if?the NO intellectuals had some kind of super status in that department.?If I was being taught or manipulated by them to?distrust or look down on the older members out in the Sections, it wasn't being expressed in such overt terms. Rather, I was merely picking up signals, which indicated that?the older elements out in the field were holding back the younger progressive intellectuals who got the Weekly People out to the members every week, or otherwise did the intellectual, day-to-day running of the Party's affairs.????Plunged, as I was, back in the old element of rank-and-file, I was suddenly confronted with having to be comradely and articulate in spite of my new superior attitude toward them, having learned to be contemptuous of their?inabilities to speak intelligently on theoretical affairs, even though I had yet to educate myself anywhere close to well on those matters, having thus far only absorbed a little?Maoism?and?Leninism. So, as I spoke, I was defensive toward my new friends in the?NO, and I ended my speech with a statement to the effect that "the?NO?staff is as dedicated to the?abolition of capital?as are the people gathered here today." This forcefully delivered statement was greeted with a deafening silence, as it would have been out of place for a member to have asked more about what I had meant in the presence of mere?sympathizers. Also, their feelings about the subject, whatever they were, were not about to be changed by my little statement, which perhaps only created suspicions that I?had gone over to 'the enemy in the NO.'?It was only much later I learned that some members had thought that?the NO had been captured by a gang of?Leninists, and had given up any hopes for their salvation.???One of my diversions while back East was to go see some of my old friends and tell them about my new life working for a revolutionary party in California. During one of my visits to one of my more radical friends, I proudly announced the name of the party I was working for, at which point he announced, "They're pigs." I said, "What?" And he said again, "They're pigs!" Stunned into silence, I could not believe my ears. I had learned a lot about radical issues from him and had developed a considerable respect for his having acquired his convictions through struggle and practice in the thick of conflict. But, this was too much of a blow to my consciousness, and instead of asking for an explanation, I withdrew into a weak and fleeting elaboration of?SLP?principles, and not long afterwards excused myself. Others to whom I explained my new life wished me well, and seemed glad that I seemed happy in my new life. But the sting of the conclusion of my radical friend didn't easily die out.???After getting back to work on the West coast, and almost like a consolation to my increasing sense of isolation and boredom, one of the?WP?writers intimated to me that 'a whole lot of bullshit was going on in the?Party, and that there would someday be a revolution within it.' Now, that was EXCITING news. But, perhaps he had forgotten what he had told me some time before, which was the story about him?being there only to write for the Weekly People, and that?what was going on in the Party was outside of the scope of his knowledge.?Well, I didn't forget. My ears had always been perked for signs of contradiction showing up. He probably told me that little story to console me after I had complained about the alienation I had discovered while working for the most part alone in the back room as shipping clerk. I thought about that story about him?being there only to work on the?WP, and I remembered how hard it was for me to swallow it whole - and then when I heard about the?so-called revolution within the?Party, something clicked, though I didn't let on that I was aware of the conflict of testimony. I could play dumb once in a while if I thought doing so could best serve my purposes.???Because of all that I was learning from them, I had come to regard the intellectuals as?heroes who would lead the?Party?out of the mess it was in, even though I wasn't able to define that mess. But, as time dragged on, and the much-anticipated?revolution?never seemed to show the slightest sign of approaching, I grew a little disappointed with the intellectual crowd. One time, while we were discussing the seemingly sad state of the membership, one of the intellectuals remarked, "The Party isn't ready for democracy." That statement fell on me like a ton of bricks, as I had always counted myself among those who wanted more?Party?democracy, and I felt as though my interests were being betrayed by the intellectuals. It also implied a real division within the?Party?between those who wanted democracy and those who seemingly had the power to grant or deny it at will.1976 Detroit?National Convention???The?NO staff?did not regularly meet as a whole to work out problems within the?Party, but once in a while a?general staff?meeting occurred, such as the one we had before the 1976?National Convention. During that?staff meeting, an atmosphere of gloom and doom prevailed, where, once again, the?NS?was going to ask a higher body, this time theConvention, to do something about the allegedly?intolerable conditions of working shorthanded at the NO.?No new permanent help had yet arrived, and the word was that,?if something was not done soon, the NO might collapse and the Party fold up.?(There might be some who had been waiting for the?Party?to collapse as long as others have been waiting for capitalism to collapse.) Those were threatening words, and I suddenly felt a lot less secure about my prospects for future employment with the?Party.????Therefore, anticipation built up as the date of the?National Convention?in Detroit drew nearer. Was this going to be the start of the?revolution within the Party? Would there be any way in which I could participate? In my insecurity about my standing with the power elite within the?Party, I had hoped that because of my past demonstrations of loyalty, such as all of the work and unpaid overtime I put in, that I would have been considered an ally of the brass, and that I might someday get a cut of the booty, which for me meant being pointed in the right direction toward learning something real about the?Party.????Because of my insecurity, I was surprised to find myself invited?to be flown to Detroit along with the rest of the NO staff. I had no idea how I was going to "pay my way", but I did manage to run a few errands and spent frustrating moments trying to keep the heating and air conditioning systems from running completely amuck. The meeting room was quite large, with a tall stage, and if it had been only half its size, it seemed as though everyone would still have fit in easily. I did a fairly bad job playing?sergeant-at-arms?for part of the proceedings because I hadn't been trained for the job and wasn't exactly sure what to do. I had a hard time playing the part of authority figure, having had so much trouble with authority figures in the past, and it reminded me too much of my bad old?ROTC?days in college. At one point, while I was getting people to show their membership cards to prove they were members, the?Convention?started a?Session, even though my policing duties had not been completed. It seemed as though my unauthoritative requests to show their cards were being ignored.????As I remember it, the tone of the?National Secretary's Report to the Convention?seemed to be that?the Party was in a lot of trouble, and that?the Party was going to have to get busy if it didn't want to disappear.?The proposed solution of?working harder?disappointed me, as it just seemed designed to fill the membership with guilt for having?slacked off and enjoyed their?"bourgeois life styles" just a little too hedonistically. The?NEC?was scolded for?doing nothing?as well, and from the limited amount of gossip running around in the?NO?to which I was privy, the?NEC?was supposed to be made into the major "fall guy" in terms of?responsibility for the decline of the?Party. For what little I knew, the?NEC?might very well have been?the right target, but at the same time, I was starting to sympathize with them. They were being hit hard in the rumor mill, but it was becoming more and more difficult to believe that they could have been?guilty of so many crimes against the?Party.????At the?Convention, I don't think I understood all that the?NS?was trying to do half the time, but it did seem like he got to "kick butt" quite a few times. After it was all over, I got the feeling from the staff that,?after two tries, the NEC, Convention and membership alike were not getting the message, and that the Party indeed was doomed to collapse.????But, amazingly enough, and not too long after the?Convention, four fresh faces showed up at the?NO?at nearly the same time. Two immediately started writing for the?WP, and the other two assumed secretarial duties. The?Convention?had also nominated?Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates?for the '76?election campaign, a?campaign manager?was hired, and all of the?NO office?spaces got filled up. It might have been around that time that the?WP?writer who cried "Bullshit!" took a leave of absence. He admitted to me one day how?burned out?he was, which was also manifested by the diminishing number of stories that had carried his byline.The Old?NEC Reports???After the dust from the?Convention?settled down, and since nothing really important seemed to come from it, and because I was still in a power and knowledge vacuum within the?Party, I finally determined to do something about learning about?Party history?by taking up a reading of the old bound volumes of?NEC Annual Reports?we had brought with us from New York. Ever since the move, the?volumes?merely sat out on an open shelf, and after lingering close to them enough times to rouse my curiosity, I eventually promised myself to someday put a reading of them a priority on my agenda. At long last, I finally started spending a couple of hours per weekend with them, starting with the teens of this century, around the start of the Arnold Petersen era. With the tremendous amount of material that was in there, it wasn't long before I decided to take notes, or else forget everything that was read.????Prior to taking up that study of the?Reports, I had felt that trying to understand a complex subject like the?inner workings of a socialist party?were subjects?beyond my grasp?due to my paucity of knowledge of things socialist, and probably due to a dim intellect on my part as well, in spite my strong motivation to learn real things about the?Party, and about socialism in general. As I progressed through the?Reports, not much more than points of general historical interest were noted at first, such as the?First World War, the?Palmer raids, etc. But, as the Roaring Twenties progressed, the?stock market crashed, and the country slipped into a?Great Depression, I thought that I would finally see some signs of?healthy growth in the?Party, but, instead what I saw was an inordinate number of?expulsions of both members and Sections. The abundance of those anomalies started to stimulate my interest in following the arguments more closely. I had few guesses as to why the?Party?should not be succeeding fabulously, especially during the?Depression, for?hard times?are supposed to?breed socialist sentiment.?At first, I suspected that?the Party was being infiltrated by the kinds of agents, kooks and disrupters?that revolutionary parties are supposed to be infiltrated with, so I then became interested in seeing if?that was the problem, and how the?Party?was handling it.????At first, presiding?National Secretary?Arnold Petersen seemed?able to slay any dragon with his mighty pen, and I enjoyed the way he draw upon history, philosophy, and other social sciences to seemingly make fools of his opponents. As I read further, however, it seemed that some members were being treated more severely than what they deserved, and I began to feel sorry for the expelled members and?Sections. Due to the sincerity of some members' arguments, and the mountains of abuse A.P. heaped on them, there were a few cases I recalled as monuments of injustice long after reading about them, one of which disappointed me profoundly.????As I read on, A.P.'s arguments began to appear more and more bombastic, vituperative, and increasingly devoid of the soundness of logic that a member would expect of a?National Secretary. While I felt that I did not have much of a mind for what was going on in this?inner sanctum of Party history, I did feel at least?somewhat?competent in the area ofsimple logic, and in being able to tell where an argument might fall short of being convincing. As I began to more carefully study the arguments that A.P. put forth, I found his arguments beginning to make less and less sense, and my esteem for him slipped to a sickeningly low point. Quantity had turned into quality. Some of his major blunders sometimes even seemed humorous or outrageous. I occasionally reported the worst cases to my fellow?NO employees, but I got different reactions from different people. When I got little or no reaction, I sometimes became unsure of myself and even felt guilty for attacking the man who had been?National Secretary?for fifty-five years; but, the more I read on, the more convinced I became that I was right about him.????A draft of a letter to a member back East told of what I was finding in the?NEC Reports:????'By the time I had gotten to the mid-twenties of the?reports, I had had it with A.P. I was rather upset with his?isolationism in dealing with other parties, pushing?isolationism as a principle?with no basis other than a chimerical appeal to "the honor and dignity" of the?SLP, as in the case of?refusing financial aid from the?Republican Party. The?Republicanswanted to help us get on the ballot in California so that the vote would be split between us and the?Socialist?Party, which was then menacing the chances of the?Republicans?winning the state election.????'Secondly, in the case of?Section?Duquoines, Illinois, I was upset by the lack of sympathy to the pleas of the principal member of the case, who was obviously doing a good job?organizing the coal miners of Southern Illinois, but getting little cooperation from the?State Committee?in getting paid for his efforts. His sincerity, as it shone through the simplicity of his language, was in stark contrast to the callousness of A.P., who, for example, nitpicked his way through the most insignificant errors in order to cause foul injustice to the organizer.????'Thirdly, in the case of {L}, I was struck by the dogged stubborn persistence of A.P. in sticking to theoretical errors in the field of economics. Even an unlearned such as I had little trouble in discerning that the so-called disrupter {L} was correct and very patient and fair.????'As I plowed through those twenty years of?NEC Reports?and came across the most amazing errors in judgment on the part of A.P., it became logical to think that?errors were being made on purpose in order to alienate members who had acquired an intelligence and independence of thought so that the intelligent members may one day rebel and either be expelled or quit in disgust, and drag the more intelligent members out of the Party with them, so as to retain in the Party only those who agreed with?the dogmatic, shallow platitudes of?A.P.'????Strong words. It makes me wonder if I ever mailed out anything close to what I had drafted. Nevertheless, back at the?NO, I remember a time when a small group of us, including many of the intellectuals, were gathered informally, and the subject of?why the Party was in such bad shape?came up. To my total amazement, it was admitted that,?while Arnold Petersen might have been bad enough, he was not the origin of the problem.?So, if?it wasn't A.P., who was it, Olive Johnson? (She was?Editor?of the?Weekly People?for a few years after De Leon passed away.) Or, was it the modern founder of the?Party?himself, Daniel De Leon? I gasped at the thought of the overwhelming task of having to read?Party documents?going back to 1890 in order to try to find out where the problem really originated. (Little did I know at the time that I would do precisely that and more.)????When I first started going to the?NO?to do the research, I was somewhat concerned that the?NS?might catch me in that act. I think the first time he caught me, he might have asked?what was I doing, but after that, I don't think he ever mentioned it again. As the research proceeded, a curious conflict flashed across my mind about being interested in?Party history, especially if our?history?wasn't really as?grand and glorious?as?Party literature?had made it out to be. What if our real?history?was something to be swept under the rug, and what if?the real facts of Party history?comprised?a history of traitorism to the working class? In that case, it would be embarrassing for a loyal member to even?think?about wanting to learn?Party history, since it would be the?history?of scandal and it would probably only be used to the detriment of the?Party. As the research proceeded, I was becoming convinced that?Party history?was indeed shameful, and it became more and more difficult to pretend that?it was glorious. Toward the end of the research, it became somewhat embarrassing to be caught in the act, like being caught with my hand in the cookie jar. But I must admit that my research had become juicy and interesting.????I couldn't escape the conclusion that I was becoming a disappointment to the?NS, since my new labors no longer redounded to the benefits of either him or the?NO, as so many of my previous efforts had. By that time, I had already grown ambivalent about my trust of the?NS?anyway. On his positive side, there was the seemingly free intellectual climate at the?NO, and it was easy to imagine that it was a lot freer than the climate that probably had existed at the time of A.P., but on the other side, there was the gnawing reminder that, during the disruptions of '68, as one of the intellectuals alleged,?it was the NS himself who had been "Arnold Petersen's hatchet man", and?it was the NS who had personally flown out West to expel the members of Section Palo Alto and 'reorganize' it with loyalist members.The Disappearance of the Notes???Not long after starting to read the?NEC Reports, I began to take notes on my observations, first in a shirt pocket notebook, but, as it filled up, and as I began to appreciate the magnitude of the project, I shifted operations to a larger notebook, which could have been referred to during the preparation of this book to clear up some questions of detail. For some careless reason, most likely as a matter of convenience, I kept those notebooks in one of the many glass-doored literature cases that were ordinarily used to store pamphlets in relatively small convenient batches. Bulkier quantities of pamphlets were kept elsewhere in big steel cabinets.???One day, while away from my work table, but within sight thereof, I heard one of the squeaky cabinet doors being opened, and when I turned around to see who was there, I could see the?NS?reaching into one of the cabinets close to where I kept my notebooks. I pretended to think nothing of it, since he did occasionally borrow?pamphlets?for perusal while considering having them reprinted, but, since he did go very close to my precious notebooks, I thought it best to look for them after he had left, and when I did, I was horrified to see that they were gone!????What I couldn't pin down for sure, however, was just when they had disappeared. It had been a few days since I had last used them or checked up on them, and, since I didn't really see them go out the door, I couldn't really blame anyone. But, it burned me very much to think about all of the work that was gone, and, in this present endeavor, I could have more precisely presented what it was in the?NEC Reports?that I had found fault with.The Significance of the?NEC Reports???After reading many of the old?National Executive Committee Reports, I did feel like I was hot on the trail of the reason why?the Party was so small and weak.?In those?Reports, A.P. actually debated the issues and took such absurd positions on so many of them that I had no doubt that intelligent members had to have been alienated by his treatment of them, but, perhaps with the aid of his alleged "rubber stamp NEC", A.P. could simply have eliminated any opposition that represented a real threat to himself or to "Party positions".????If A.P. could have been correct on issues enough of the time to maintain a certain amount of credibility, he could then string along a group that would continue to support him and the?National Office, no matter how badly he blundered in other respects. Members who became aware of glaring contradictions within A.P.'s theories and wanted to bring them to the attention of the rest of the?Party?would only burn themselves out trying to do so, and then they would resign, or perhaps be expelled. Anything corrective that an individual might want to do could be either repeatedly voted against by one's?Section, or a whole rebellious?Section?could easily be expelled and the?A.P. loyalists?reorganized back into the?Party. In the face of such opposition, the worst that a dissenter could do at that point would be to carry along a few others out of the?Party, and perhaps organize another splinter party, such as the many that the?SLP?is famous for having spawned. With a scenario like that, the only people who would remain in the?Party?would be those with little burning interest in seeing that truth prevailed, and were rather content in parroting?De Leonisms?and?Petersenisms. Thus, on the basis of what I was reading in the?NEC Reports, it started to make sense to me why there was?so little vitality left in the Party, given the caliber of those who were left inside to try to attract new blood from the outside.????As an example of what I mean, I used to have the assistance of a member who came quite a few miles each week to help us wrap and mail the?Weekly People. As time went on, I related some of the curiosities I was finding in the pages of the?NEC Reports. After so many weeks of listening to me, he finally expressed himself one day by slamming down one of the newspapers he was wrapping and exclaimed, "Well, let's not do this if it's not any good!" I was taken by surprise at the intensity of his exclamation, but, not wishing to lose his services and good company, I requested patience on his part, but it wasn't long before he found better ways to spend his Fridays, and I soon found myself short of help again. In retrospect, his statement could only have reflected a sore lack of confidence in what he had been espousing, perhaps for much of his life.????After becoming depressed enough over the whole situation, I began to feel that somehow there should be?a campaign against A.P. within the Party. But I could not figure out how it would be possible to carry on a?campaign?on the basis of some dusty old books that perhaps only a tenth of the membership had ever read at all, never mind understood. I felt like I was one of only a very few within the?Party?who understood why the?Party?might have suffered considerably from the effects of having an evil genius at the helm, and I wondered how large a circle of allies I could muster to my new cause. As I talked up the subject among my fellow employees, I began to realize that few to none could be counted on.????Few have been the times I have been sufficiently filled with the confidence that comes from being convinced of the righteousness of my ways to actually act or speak, but my suggestion during a?Section?meeting for?implementing a campaign against A.P.?was met with what could only have been intended as a put-down, as one of the intellectuals answered my suggestion with "That would be undialectical!" Everyone beside myself seemed to enjoy that comment, as the room was filled with laughter. Not having understood?dialectics?at all at the time, I was perfectly silenced, and probably reacted by spending the next few weeks reading "Dialectics of Nature" by Engels. But, even after educating myself a bit, I don't think that I ever figured out what the intellectual might have intended, except to silence or humiliate me.????Because that?Section meeting?included some of the older?Petersen loyalists, I concocted a plausible explanation to myself that 'the intellectuals would have been embarrassed to have endorsed a criticism of Petersen in the presence of?loyalists'. So, I forgave them intellectually, but I remained indignant at being alone with my lack of fear, for I was tired of waiting for the?revolution in the?Party?to begin. I was also convinced that even the?Petersen loyalists, if they really were socialists, had to have been at least?somewhat?interested in?the truth, and could?sometimes?be relied upon to rally behind it, but I might also have been a little naive by holding that opinion too strongly in that particular instance.????Later on, in a private moment, one of the intellectuals advised me, if I?want to get anywhere in the Party: "You have to be a politician."?I was shocked into silence by that statement, for I suspected "playing politics" meant little more than compromise of principle and betraying the lower classes in exchange for some small gain. His statement only intensified my disappointment in the intellectuals in whom I had earlier placed so much faith and admired so much. Later on, I tried to assure myself that what he had to have meant was that?it would have been better to go slow with my ideas and try to diplomatically build up some interest in them, which may not have been bad advice at all.The Sacred Cash Cow???At some point around these events, one of the intellectuals explained to me in no uncertain terms that?the older members out in the Sections were the bread and butter of the National Office because of the small but steady trickle of cash that flowed out of their pockets and into the Party coffers.?I never before had any cause to be concerned with?Party finances?very much, since it was the?NS?and the?NEC?who held much of the responsibility for?financial stability. Since I never had to go without a regular paycheck, I figured that they must have been doing their job well enough in that department. But, with my enlightenment on the issue of?who really paid the bills, it became obvious that this steady trickle of money was very significant to some of my co-workers. From the context of their actions, or lack thereof, the necessity to keep the cash flowing in without interruption was perhaps considered a duty by this group. I then began to sense that the dirt that I was digging up about A.P. must have been apprehended with fear and loathing by those who could see where my research was leading to. Perhaps they had even seen a similar ugly scenario play itself out before. I began to feel a certain amount of pressure to?lay off and let sleeping dogs lie.????But, if I had my say, there was going to be some real fundamental re-education in the?Party, even if that meant a degree of rebellion by those who could not possibly change their minds in what they had believed for decades, and even if their rebellion against new ideas could have resulted in some degree of?financial disruption. Since many of the?NOworkers were probably not much more financially independent than myself, the prospect of?interminable financial disruption?might have been too ugly for contemplation, in spite of the?Party's $100,000 or $500,000 bank account?that was rumored to exist. My notes conflicted on which figure was the actual one I had heard kicked about.????What it all boiled down to was that no one wanted to have anything to do with anything that could have been considered a threat to their sacred cash cow. And sometimes even I was tempted to say, as all kinds of thoughts raced through my head in those intense times, "Cut me in on the profits, and I'll shut up, too." But, I was probably too afraid that they would have said "Yes", and then where would I have been? How could I ever look at myself in the mirror again, after having sold out?Startling Discoveries???After brooding for a while about my isolation from the rest of the?Party?and the?NO?with respect to the A.P. problem, I began to wonder if something worse than his mistakes in the?NEC Reports?had occurred over the years. As I continued reading the?NEC Reports?and found myself getting bored with what was seeming to become repetitions of?patterns of betrayals of the rank-and-file, I began to wish that I could find an area of research that would be more interesting, or could lead to more of a basis for convincing my?Comrades?of the necessity for action on the Petersen question. If I was going to get anywhere with my?campaign against A.P., I was going to have to come up with something more substantial than simply finding fault with a historical record that few people would ever read again in the history of humankind.????I wanted to pursue my?campaign against A.P.?one way or another, and, for a while, I struggled with the question of what to do next. I knew that the matter had to be brought to some kind of a resolution, for I could not see myself wasting my life working for a?Party?that did not seem very concerned with its mistakes, but rather had glorified the memory of the person who was responsible for at least some of those mistakes. The position of the?Party?was, to me, like a person trying to keep clean while living in a garbage dump, but I still hadn't come to any grand conclusions about the effect A.P.'s evil genius might have had on?what the Party stood for.?No one in the Party would have been able to propagate fraud, I theorized, for?it would have caused any wide-awake member to reject its author, but my continued curiosity about the true nature of A.P.'s legacy caused me to continue to wonder if some kind of?grand fraud?might have been perpetrated by him in some of the?Party literature?that he authored.???I would have estimated that at least half of everything in the?Party's literature catalog?had been written by A.P., and I prided myself at one time for having at least one copy of each. I didn't have the faintest idea at first where I might find the underpinnings of the?Party's Socialist Industrial Unionism program?in my collection, but after browsing for awhile, I finally came upon A.P.'s "Proletarian Democracy versus Dictatorships and Despotism" ("PD vs. D+D"). I remembered having skimmed it at a time when I was relatively new to the?Party, but had not been very favorably impressed by it. But, on reading it anew, I noticed with great interest that it was one of the few works in?Party literature?that tried to explain the basis of the?SIU program?on a theoretical plane.???What with my growing disillusionment with a good portion of?Party doctrine, and my having warmed to the studies of Lenin, Mao and other revolutionaries, it wasn't long before I adopted the firm conviction that one of the roles of the?Party?should be?the conquest of state power, and by May of '76, I wasn't afraid to let even a conservative member with whom I corresponded know that. And yet, I remained so weak in theoretical matters that I could not have expounded on exactly how Lenin's theories conflicted with the?SIU, with the exception that they looked pretty much opposed.???So, at this point in my investigation, and with a great desire to find major flaws in A.P.'s literary efforts, I started reading "PD vs. D+D" from the very first page with an extremely critical eye and almost immediately found a couple of things that stood out as blunders that I could attack. Those two blunders, only one of which I can remember, I thought would prove to my fellow members that A.P. was a charlatan who had to be exposed, and that hopefully the exposure of his blunders would cause the A.P. dragon to be slain.The?State Convention???Having found what I thought was evidence of major blunders or fraud on the part of A.P. was a real trip for me, and I was so excited that I could barely sleep. In a way, it was too bad that I had to discover this on the eve of the?Party's State Convention, and that I also didn't take the time to cool out and analyze my discoveries more carefully. With all of the excitement over my newly found discoveries and my fatigue, I arrived at the?Convention?in a less than fully functioning state of mind.????But, what was the excitement all about? After becoming a socialist, I lived under the impression that?information alone could change the world?(for, after all, information alone certainly changed me) and that?the successful imparting of my treasure trove of socialist lore would change whoever heard it, who would then join me in changing the world.?My subsequent discovery of so many problems in the?Party?helped to dampen that illusion considerably, so I found myself in dire need of a new dream to live for. Then, suddenly, there I was, in possession of information that could change 'not the world', but rather the?Party, and the?Party?could change drastically if the information were allowed to surface. Having taken the time to analyze its mistakes, a changed?Party?could help?change the world, I theorized.????As my life evolved, I had uncovered more and more lies behind the way I had been controlled and enslaved from day one, and every lie that I discovered had made me angry. Suddenly, in my own allegedly revolutionary?Party, I thought I had the key to a whole system of lies, the whole reason why my?Party?would never do anything but fade away unless those lies were swept away, and I suddenly felt empowered in a sense, but?to exercise that power in the wrong way, or maybe even in?any?way, could put me in danger, due to the threat to the property system that the exposure of those lies would initiate. The whole property system depended upon those lies to control the people, and without those lies, the system would collapse, so I theorized. I found myself in an unusual situation, as nothing I had ever done in my little life had even vaguely prepared me for these uncharted waters, and I was very excited about the possibilities that lay ahead.????I imagined that there were forces, maybe within the?Party, and certainly outside the?Party, that wanted to perpetuate the lies. I imagined that the?Party?had served the ruling class well for decades, keeping false doctrine alive, misleading my class into dead-end activities, frittering away the energies of the members, sympathizers and everyone else who had ever come into contact with them. Perhaps these forces even included the?national security establishment. Suddenly, I felt like I had been working all along for the?Feds, as though I could have summed up my whole?Party?career up to that point with the realization, "So, that's what I've been doing these past few years, working for the?Feds." But there was never a paycheck from them, and I felt angered and cheated at the same time, like I'd been taken to the cleaners one more time. What's worse was that I never would have consciously worked for the?Feds?even if they paid me, unless I could have gotten into a position of trust and then use that position to sabotage them, to bring their walls and ceilings crashing down upon them, that?executive committee of the ruling class. Such was the paranoid madness that I felt at that time, and nearly every police car that I saw caused me to fear that?it might be coming for me.?I barely found it possible to put the brakes on my imagination run amuck.????Back to the?State Convention: During an?open session, when members had chances to openly speak their minds, I finally got the nerve to stand up and recite my discoveries. There I was, in an unslept state of complete paranoia, convinced that I was probably?in the company of government agents who were in on this conspiracy to bamboozle?the honest, but rather naive and ill-educated membership. My only hope to escape assassination (for being?the only one smart enough to figure this conspiracy out, and for being brave enough to want to educate my fellow members about it) was to announce my discoveries before as large a crowd of members as could be gathered, and this?Convention?filled the bill perfectly. If I were to be?found dead shortly thereafter, members would have suspected that it was related to my discoveries and foul play would have been suspected. Then my premature death could be investigated, the responsible parties could be caught by some good detective work, and the revolution could continue.?Maybe.????Never before in my life had I been caught up in such intriguing circumstances, and I was not handling it very well. But, live and learn. This martyr was prepared to risk everything for the sake of the members, whom I believed were honest and worth fighting for. I introduced my arguments by claiming that my discoveries could explain the diminutive size of the?Party, and that A.P. had practiced gross deceit. Then someone interrupted me and told me?not to attack a dead man who could not defend himself from the grave. (A.P. had died sometime in 1975.) Wishing that I could have just shut up and stopped right there, I hesitated, but realized that there was no turning back and continued on. I went on to state that, since the present?NS?had been the hand-picked successor of A.P., then his integrity was in question as well. Having thus dispensed with what should only have been conclusions to well reasoned arguments, I then proceeded to try to give the proof of my contentions, if only I could have remembered them.????Well, my arguments totally fizzled. The first point I tried to make is forgotten by now, and the second point revolved around the definition of the term "vanquished", which I didn't even bother to look up beforehand, so my second argument fizzled worse than the first. I had more arguments, but since I wasn't doing so well, I figured I'd better give up. By that time, the public humiliation I had feared for so long had descended upon me, so I sat down and tried to pretend?nothing had happened. It wasn't so bad.?I lived through it, in a physical sense.????Back at work, it was an embarrassment to be there, especially the first day. I had the feeling that the other workers were looking at me to see if it was really me or if I had cracked altogether or what. Their silence was deafening. I felt as though I was condemned to perform flawlessly for a couple of decades before anyone would forget the strange scene I had provoked, and even then it would not be forgotten. The hardest part was when one of the?WP?writers chewed me out for having attacked the?National Secretary. I think I shrank a few inches. I knew I had messed up. Everyone else just pretended?nothing happened, which was only slightly more bearable than being attacked.???One thing that changed forever as a result of that incident was the dreaded loss of my precious status as a?trusted NO loyalist, even though the previous enjoyment of that status might have only been the result of my own self-delusion. But, after the?State Convention, it was much more difficult to exist in the?Party. I felt as though no one would ever trust me again, and that I would have no more allies or friends left in the?Party.?I tried by silent deed to convince everyone that?everything was back to normal, but internally I knew things had changed forever and I began to feel much more like the spy for the?labor movement?(that I used to joke to myself and few others about being) who had infiltrated theParty?in order to see if it was really the viable working class organization that it claimed to be.???That incident was definitely a setback to my already meager level of credibility, to myself as well as to others, but, after a while, I got over it enough to continue on with my project of proving that A.P. was more than just 'an impeccably motivated upholder of Marxism and other things pure and wholesome who might have made an honest mistake on a rare occasion.' That incident did not shake me off my chassis so much that I was about to stray from my path of pursuing the?truth?about the?Party, but I knew that in the future I would have to be much more careful and absolutely sure of the accuracy of my accusations. It might have been around then that I had an unforgettable dream or nightmare of being in an underground torture chamber with some friends, and in order to deliver us all out of that chamber safely, I had been chosen at random to perform a physical task of great accuracy similar to William Tell's; and if I failed, we would all have been killed."Proletarian Democracy versus Dictatorships and Despotism"??? After looking through "PD vs. D+D" for awhile, I finally got to the place ("Part II: PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP - INDUSTRIAL GOVERNMENT") that got down and dirty with socialist theory, and was replete with quotes from the founders of socialism. As to verifying whether A.P.'s theories were correct or not, I may not have known what to do about that, but I could look forward to looking up the supporting quotes that A.P. used in order to see whether or not they were used legitimately. That I could do and do well, I imagined, if only I could find the exact sources of the quotes. The only problem that I could foresee was that finding the quotes was going to take a?lot?of time and effort, in spite of my desire to?immediately?recapture my credibility by proving that I was right, and A.P. wrong.????My immediate mission, therefore, was to try to check every quote from Marx, Engels, and Lenin that A.P. used to lend weight to his theoretical arguments. After my false start at the?State Convention, it was imperative that I show that A.P. had taken the quotes out of context, had misquoted, or otherwise did something mean and nasty to them to try to make them mean something other than what the founders of socialism had intended. I knew of no other way of refuting A.P.'s theories, because I knew that I was not a professional scholar or a theorist of any sort, so doing the legwork of looking up the quotes was the only possible way for me to begin to accomplish my goal.????Conveniently enough, the books I had already accumulated were to be the major tools for this endeavor. With the?45 volumes of Lenin's Collected Works, I certainly had all of the Lenin that I would need for the task, but I had not yet bought any of the?works of Marx and Engels?that I was going to need, so it was off to the bookstore once again, this time for the three-volume?Selected Works?and the volume of?Selected Correspondence?that didn't look like much at first, but was packed with hundreds of pages of valuable information. As I began my work, I even remembered having said to myself when a relatively new member, "If I ever get the time, I would like to check out the quotes that A.P. used." Indeed, it was past time to take that task off the back burner.????One problem that I did not anticipate was that I was still unprepared emotionally for what would happen when I did find my very first quote completely out of context. I was relieved and devastated at the same time to find that my deepest, darkest suspicions about the?Party?were all of a sudden irrevocably verified. I checked and rechecked, but the conclusion was the same every time. I turned away from my labors in disgust and almost quit the?Party?right then and there. I must have cried at least half a bucket of tears of disappointment, and barely ate a thing the next day. I didn't go back to normal eating patterns for three days, and I believe that I lost over ten pounds, though, regrettably, not permanently.????With so much of my life riding on the verification of whether A.P. had deliberately falsified?Marxism, and that the?Party?of which I was a member was spreading A.P.'s lies, the proof that I had found also caused me to withdraw socially. To me, it was a catastrophe of the greatest magnitude. It was an irrevocable confirmation of my worst suspicions of having completely wasted my time once again in my life, and, what was worse, I was also betraying my class, making the lives of others?worse?by my participation in?Party work, by helping the?Party?distribute lies. Obviously, I was plagued with guilt, along with so many other negative emotions.????The discovery of the dishonesty also threw me on the horns of a dilemma: whether to quit right away to avoid further dishonoring myself by associating with a basically dishonest?program, or to remain with the?Party?and try to work legally within it to force the issue to the?Party's attention, and to split off the professional liars from what I felt to be a basically honest majority of members. After getting things into perspective for a few truly miserable days, I realized that it was not only worth the effort for the benefit of the honest members, but it was also financially mandatory that I remain in the?Party?to keep making my measly $3.50 per hour salary for a while longer. My finances were in pretty bad shape in those times because I had spent what little money I was making as though?I was going to work for the Party forever, and as though?I didn't have to worry about ever finding another job again.?But, the guilt associated with staying on was impinging on my consciousness to the point where I was seriously considering quitting to solve that conflict. If California had been as generous about giving job-quitters?unemployment compensation?as freely as my home state in the Sixties, I might have quit the?Party?right then, but such was not my fate. Financial necessity ruled the day, and I continued working.????I also realized that my tenure with the?Party?was going to depend upon how my fellow?Comrades?reacted to my research. I could foresee a time when I might have to put aside my efforts and quit the?Party?if the others decided to ignore my efforts completely. If I were to discover a pack of lies that had to be exposed, but if my?Comrades?refused to do anything about them, I would then have to conclude that I would have to quit to avoid working for the lies for the rest of my life. I may not have been working directly for the?Feds, but I was certainly still in the?SLP, and I was in a position to help put an end to the?Party's lies, and totally legally, so I thought.????Though the illegal means of running off with the mailing list and informing the?WP?readers directly of my dilemma tempted me, I knew that to indulge therein would mean total doom, were my involvement in underhanded matters to be discovered. Not wishing to spend the rest of my life in jail either, I elected to work legally within the?Party?until forced to quit by the?Party's possible intransigence. I promised myself that, as long as I was working at the?NO, I was going to save every dime I could so that I could someday be able to afford to spend a month or two without pay while I looked for another job. Just at that time, the radio happened to play the Jefferson Airplane tune whose first lines ran, "When the truth is shown to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, don't you want somebody to love?", and I felt like I finally understood what the lyrics meant, as though they had been written especially for the situation I was in.????What follows is the analysis of the lies that I discovered in one small portion of A.P.'s pamphlet, a discovery that caused a lot of trauma:(End Par(Part B)PART TWO:THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT In Part II of "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism", Arnold Petersen started building a case for some kind of basic antagonism between the proletariat and the peasantry. This is the portion of his pamphlet that upset me so much back in June of 1976, when I discovered the many lies in it. The numbers in brackets {xx} indicate points of interest that are later analyzed piece by piece. The bulk of the more easily refuted lies began on page 41 of A.P.'s:"Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism"... "And Lenin, in his "The State and Revolution," says: "On the Continent of Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not in a single country constitute the majority of the people. A 'people's' revolution actually sweeping the majority into its current, could be such only if embracing both the proletariat and the peasantry."p. 41: "Peasantry and Proletariat. "Note that Lenin places the proletariat in juxtaposition to the peasantry. A whole class which is the legitimate result of definite historical causes and present economic conditions, and which possesses considerable economic power, however diffused it may be, cannot arbitrarily be swept aside, or ignored. It must be taken into account. {1} Likewise the small bourgeois who is barely hanging on to existence by the skin of his teeth. Lenin has described this situation graphically in his biting criticism of his own domestic brand of burlesque bolsheviks: "To defeat the great, centralized bourgeoisie is a thousand times easier than to 'defeat' millions and millions of small owners who in their daily, imperceptible, inconspicuous but demoralizing activities achieve the very results desired by the bourgeoisie, and restore the bourgeoisie." {2} ("Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder.") {3} Property interests are bound to dominate the actions of such groups, {4} and they must be convinced that it is in their interest to support the proletarian revolution, or be subjected to forcible repression in the interest of that revolution. {5} This condition, as I have intimated, prevailed also in Russia in 1917. Does it prevail in the United States? Even to ask the question is to subject oneself to ridicule: {6} The over-whelming, the immense majority of the people in this country is of the wage working class. {7} The so-called middle class is so dependent on "big business" that its group status is largely a fiction. {8} In a revolutionary (or any other thorough-going crisis) it would, almost to a man, be hurled into the ranks of the proletariat. {9} And as for "the peasantry" in America - well, even a fifty horsepower microscope would fail to reveal the presence of that outlandish species, {10} the Anarcho-Communists and Mr. Mencken to the contrary notwithstanding. "So important a factor is the presence of a peasantry considered by Lenin, {11} that he observes (in his refutation of Kautsky's plea for "bourgeois democracy") that "if Kautsky still remembered it, he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producer is predominant." {12} ("The Proletarian Revolution.") The logic of this statement is that in a country where this peasantry is conspicuous by its complete absence, {13} where, in short, the fact of complete industrialization, even of agriculture, is so obvious as to impress itself upon the dullest intellect - {14} that in such a country there is no need of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the contemporaneous sense of continental Europe of 1871 or Russia of 1917. {15} We have here agricultural wage workers {16} - proletarians who happen to live in the country. We have the large bonanza farms, the great mechanized agricultural plants, and we have small or tenant farmers whose status - economically - corresponds exactly to the petty corner grocers and similar petty bourgeois elements and whose economic power is exactly zero." {17} This theoretical material can be analyzed in two different ways. The second way will be an analysis of the three quotes that A.P. used, but first, let us summarize all of A.P.'s theoretical material: 1 'The economic power of the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry on the continent of Europe of the last century was considerable and had to be taken into account. 2 'Using Lenin as an authority on the issue, it is easier for the proletariat to defeat the big bourgeoisie than to defeat the class of small owners. 3 'Property interests dominate the interests of small owners. 4 'Small owners must be convinced that the proletarian revolution is also in their own interests, or they will be subjected to forcible repression in the interests of that revolution. 5 'Class compositions in Russia in 1917, and in Europe in 1871, were similar. 6 'One must be careful not to question SLP pronouncements on class composition, lest one be subjected to ridicule. 7 'Wage-labor predominates in American industry. 8 'The status of the middle class in the United States is a fiction, due to its dependence on big business. 9 'The American middle class would be hurled down into the ranks of the proletariat in the face of any real crisis. 10 'The American peasantry barely exists at all.11 'Lenin considered the presence of the peasantry to be very important in Russia.12 'Lenin's quote showed that a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary in a country in which the small property holders predominate.13 'The American peasantry barely exists at all.14 'In America, agriculture has been completely industrialized.15 'In America, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not necessary, as in the example of Russia in 1917, or of Europe in 1871.16 'American agricultural workers are wage-workers.17 'The economic power of small owners, tenant farmers, and small business people is zero.' Collecting similar points, let us rearrange them into four groups: 1 'The economic power of the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry on the continent of Europe of the last century was considerable and had to be taken into account. 3 'Property interests dominate the interests of small owners. 5 'Class compositions in Russia in 1917, and in Europe in 1871, were similar.11 'Lenin considered the presence of a peasantry to be very important in Russia. From these four points, it looks as though: 'The peasantry and middle classes in Europe and Russia in the old days adhered very strongly to bourgeois values, and were economically very important.' Now for the next group of similars: 2 'Using Lenin as an authority on the issue, it is easier for the proletariat to defeat the big bourgeoisie than to defeat the class of small owners. 4 'Small owners must be convinced that the proletarian revolution is also in their own interests, or they will be subjected to forcible repression in the interests of that revolution.12 'Lenin's quote showed that a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary in a country in which the small property holders predominate. From these four points, it may be concluded that: 'The dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry, middle classes and small property holders.' Now for the next group of similars: 7 'Wage-labor predominates in American industry. 8 'The status of the middle class in the United States is a fiction, due to its dependence on big business. 9 'The American middle class would be hurled down into the ranks of the proletariat in the face of any real crisis. 10 'The American peasantry barely exists at all.13 'The American peasantry barely exists at all.14 'In America, agriculture has been completely industrialized.16 'American agricultural workers are wage-workers.17 'The economic power of small owners, tenant farmers, and small business people is zero.' From these eight points, it looks as though: 'Small owners and peasants play an insignificant role, or less, in America today, the only important economic relationship being that between capitalist and wage-worker.' There are two remaining points: 6 'One should be careful not to question Party pronouncements on class composition, lest one be subjected to ridicule.15 'In America, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not necessary, as in the example of Russia in 1917, or of Europe in 1871.' Ignoring point #6, we can go back and collect four main conclusions: 1 'The peasantry and middle classes in Europe and Russia in the old days adhered very strongly to bourgeois values, and were economically very important. 2 'The dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry, middle classes and small property holders. 3 'Small owners and peasants play an insignificant role, or less, in America today, the only important economic relationship being that between capitalist and wage-worker. 4 'In America, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not necessary, as in the example of Russia in 1917, or of Europe in 1871.' One way to combine the four points would be: 'The peasantry and middle classes played an important role in Europe and Russia in the old days, but, in America today, they do not play an important role. Since the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry and middle classes, then such a dictatorship is not necessary in America today, where those classes have no significant numbers, or play no significant role, and consequently would scarcely need to be repressed.' Of the 4 points, #2 and #3 can easily be proved to be wrong. The only point that can easily be conceded is the 1st point, that 'the peasantry and middle classes were economically important in Europe and Russia in the old days.' With that fact, we can take no issue at all. So, let us look more closely at the other points, starting with the second: 'The dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry, middle classes and small property holders.' This point can easily be proven false in two major ways. First of all, the bona fide evidence from the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin shows that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the uppermost classes, and secondly, there is plenty of evidence to show that the proletariat and the middle classes were to ally against their common enemy - the uppermost classes. In the last few centuries, the bourgeoisie was commonly known as the middle class, i.e., the class between the 'nobility' of feudal landowners and the lower classes of serfs, workers and peasants, depending upon the time and country. In those days, middle classes, i.e., small manufacturers and merchants tried to evolve, but feudal relations of production and exchange hampered their economic activities. Nowadays in America, the term 'middle class' has evolved to include small business owners and/or higher-salaried professionals. Secondly, the Hammer and Sickle on the flag of the old Soviet Union in itself was symbolic of the worker-peasant alliance, indicating the great theoretical importance that the worker-peasant alliance held for the founders of the Soviet Union. Dictatorship and alliance were often intertwined as topics in the works of Marx and Engels. In Marx's 1874 "Comments on Bakunin's Book, Statehood and Anarchy", Bakunin's spurious attack on Marx was quoted, and then Marx commented on it (MESW II, pp. 411-2):B: "For example, ... the vulgar peasants, the peasant rabble, towards whom, it is common knowledge, the Marxists [are not] kindly disposed, and who, standing on the lowest level of culture, will probably be ruled by the urban and factory proletariat."M: "That means that wherever the peasant en masse exists as a private proprietor, where he even forms a more or less substantial majority, as is the case in all countries of the West-European continent, where he has not disappeared and has not been replaced by agricultural day labourers, as in England, the following may happen: either he prevents and wrecks every workers' revolution, as he has up to the present done in France, or else the proletariat (for the peasant-owner does not belong to the proletariat, and even where his position makes him belong to it, he thinks that he does not) in governing must take measures which lead to a direct improvement in his condition, and which, consequently, win him over to the side of the revolution. From the very outset these measures must facilitate the transition from private to collective landownership, so that the peasant himself comes to it through economic means; care should, however, be taken not to antagonise him, for example, by proclaiming the abolition of the inheritance right or of his property. The latter can be done only where the capitalistic tenant has ousted the peasant, and where the actual cultivator is just as much a proletarian, a wageworker as the rural worker and, hence, has directly, not indirectly, identical interests with him; much less should landownership be strengthened by enlarging the parcel through the simple handing over of large estates to the peasants, as in Bakunin's revolutionary programme.B: ""Or, if we consider the question from a national viewpoint, then, we may presume, to the Germans the Slavs will for the same reason be in the same slavish dependence on the German proletariat in which the latter is on its own bourgeoisie" (p. 278).M: "Schoolboyish rot! A radical social revolution is connected with definite historical conditions of economic development; the latter are its prerequisites. Therefore, it is possible only where, alongside with capitalist production, the industrial proletariat accounts for at least a considerable portion of the people. To have any chance of success it must be able mutatis mutandis* to do directly for the peasants at least as much as the French bourgeoisie did for the then existing French peasants during its revolution. A pretty idea that the rule of the workers involves oppression of agricultural labour! But this is where Mr. Bakunin's innermost thought is revealed. He has no idea of social revolution, knows only its political phrases; its economic conditions have no meaning for him. Since all previous economic forms, irrespective of whether they are developed or not, involved the enslavement of the worker (be it in the form of wage-worker, peasant, etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is equally possible under all these forms. He goes even further. He wants the European social revolution, whose economic basis is capitalist production, to be founded on the level of the Russian or Slavic farming and stock-breeding peoples, and that it should not exceed that level; he wants this even though he realises that navigation creates difference among brothers, but only navigation, because this is a difference known to all politicians! The will, not economic conditions, is the basis of his social revolution." __________ "* With the necessary changes having been made.-Ed ." {Note by Progress Publishers.}" As Marx himself has shown, there simply can be no question about the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat except as a dictatorship over the big bourgeoisie, and absolutely not a dictatorship over the peasantry or petty bourgeoisie. Also, note the ridicule with which Marx greeted Bakunin's theory that 'the workers would repress the peasants'.The Worker-Peasant Alliance In an 1847 interview entitled "Principles of Communism", in which the ideas of the worker-peasant alliance may not have been as well developed as in his later works, Engels answered some questions (MESW I, p. 90): "Q[uestion]18: What will be the course of this revolution? "A[nswer]: In the first place it will inaugurate a democratic constitution and thereby directly or indirectly the political rule of the proletariat. Directly in England, where the proletariat already constitutes the majority of the people. Indirectly in France and in Germany, where the majority of the people consists, in addition to proletarians, of petty peasants and bourgeois, who are now being proletarianised and in their political interests are becoming more and more dependent on the proletariat and therefore soon will have to submit to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will involve a second fight, one that can end only in the victory of the proletariat." Compared to the excerpts that follow, this 1847 excerpt cannot be regarded as the last word on the worker-peasant alliance. In the works of Marx and Engels that I have accessed so far, this is the only language that I have seen of the quality of "submit to the demands of the proletariat", or "Perhaps ... a second fight". In "The Class Struggles in France", written in 1850, Marx observed the worker-peasant alliance in action, and in one passage, descriptive of the essence of this alliance, wrote (MESW I, p. 214): "The French workers could not take a step forward, could not touch a hair of the bourgeois order, until the course of the revolution had aroused the mass of the nation, peasants and petty bourgeois, standing between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, against this order, against the rule of capital, and had forced it to attach itself to the proletarians as their protagonists. The workers could buy this victory only through the tremendous defeat in June.*" __________ * "This insurrection was the first great civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." {From Note 42 of the Progress Publishers Edition.} In "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", Marx compared the social position of the peasantry under the first and second Napoleons and gave a sense of how class alliances change from one era to another (MESW I, pp. 481-2): "The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the {19th} century set the state to stand guard over the newly arisen small holding and manured it with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its blood and brains and throws them into the alchemistic cauldron of capital. The Code Napoleon is now nothing but a codex of distraints, forced sales and compulsory auctions. To the four million (including children, etc.) officially recognised paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes in France must be added five million who hover on the margin of existence and either have their haunts in the countryside itself or, with their rags and their children, continually desert the countryside for the towns and the towns for the countryside. The interests of the peasants, therefore, are no longer, as under Napoleon, in accord with, but in opposition to the interests of the bourgeoisie, to capital. Hence the peasants find their natural ally and leader in the urban proletariat, whose task is the overthrow of the bourgeois order." A.P.'s denial of the worker-peasant alliance could easily have been avoided if he had merely referred to the Party's own reprints of Marx's pamphlets "The Class Struggles in France" and "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", but A.P.'s denial of that alliance is just one of the many ways in which SLP literature contradicts Marx. A.P.'s second point concerned the class composition of agricultural labor:The Alleged Predominance of Russian Middle Classes A.P. identified agricultural labor in Russia almost exclusively with small peasant owners, whereas Lenin's figures showed that agricultural labor in Russia was actually closer to 65% wage labor. In his 1903 pamphlet entitled "To the Rural Poor" (LCW 6, pp. 361-430, esp. p. 381), Lenin described the increasingly capitalist nature of agricultural production in Russia. Using figures that excluded Siberia and the Caucasus, Lenin found that of ten million owners of fifteen million horses, six and one half million owned either one horse or no horse at all, and were forced to sell their labor power at least part of the time, and were thus counted among the very poor peasants. Also, two million middle peasants owned four million horses, and one and one-half million rich peasants owned seven and one-half million horses. Also, throughout most of Russia (except Siberia and the Caucasus), Lenin found that peasants applied for more than eight million passports in order to migrate to perform wage-labor. There were still some feudal relations of agricultural production that Lenin brought to light, but the trend in agriculture moved increasingly toward capitalist relations of production. A good portion of Lenin's early writings refuted writings of petty-bourgeois "Narodniks", who represented the interests of rich peasants who tended to idealize peasant life. They ignored the splitting of the peasantry into capitalist and proletarian classes after the 'freeing' of the serfs in 1861, and they also lumped all agricultural workers into one homogeneous group, much in the way A.P. hypothesized 'a uniform class that the proletariat would have to rule after coming to power', similar to Bakunin's theory. In a major work, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia", Lenin presented a great deal of data to back up his analyses (LCW 3): (p. 311): "Secondly, the small rural bourgeois (in Russia, as in other capitalist countries) is connected by a number of transitional stages with the small-holding "peasant," and with the rural proletarian who has been allotted a patch of land. This circumstance is one of the reasons for the viability of the theories which do not distinguish the existence of a rural bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat among "the peasantry."* __________ "* The favorite proposition of the Narodnik economists that "Russian peasant farming is in the majority of cases purely natural economy" is, incidentally, built up by ignoring this fact. ... One has but to take "average" figures, which lump together both the rural bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat - and this proposition will pass as proved!" (pp. 376-7): "It is usual at the lower stage of capitalism which we are reviewing for the industrialist still to be scarcely differentiated from the peasant. The combination of industry with agriculture plays an extremely important part in aggravating and accentuating the differentiation of the peasantry: the prosperous and the well-off peasants open workshops, hire workers from among the rural proletariat, and accumulate money for commercial and usurious transactions. The peasant poor, on the other hand, provide the wage-workers, the handicraftsmen who work for buyers-up, and the bottom groups of petty-master handicraftsmen, those most crushed by the power of merchant's capital. Thus, the combination of industry with agriculture consolidates and develops capitalist relations, spreading them from industry to agriculture and vice-versa. That characteristic of capitalist society, the separation of industry from agriculture, manifests itself at this stage in the most rudimentary form . . . (pp. 377-8): "The separation of industry from agriculture takes place in connection with the differentiation of the peasantry, and does so by different paths at the two poles of the countryside: the well-to-do minority open industrial establishments, enlarge them, improve their farming methods, hire farm labourers to till the land, devote an increasing part of the year to industry, and - at a certain stage of the development of the industry - find it more convenient to separate their industrial from their agricultural undertakings, i.e., to hand over the farm to other members of the family, or to sell farm buildings, animals, etc., and adopt the status of burghers, of merchants. The separation of industry from agriculture is preceded in this case by the formation of entrepreneur relations in agriculture. At the other pole of the countryside the separation of industry from agriculture consists in the fact that the poor peasants are being ruined and turned into wage-workers (industrial and agricultural). At this pole of the countryside it is not the profitableness of industry, but need and ruin, that compels the peasant to abandon the land, and not only the land but also independent industrial labour; here the process of the separation of industry from agriculture is one of the expropriation of the small producer." In these excerpts, the actual dynamics of Russian society were illuminated by Lenin. Contrast Lenin's treatment of class dynamics with A.P.'s oversimplifications, and it isn't difficult to see how the oversimplifications aided and abetted A.P.'s agenda of persuading his readers to think of Russia as 'the home of a uniform class of small-holding peasants that the proletariat would have to rule over'. If we did not make ourselves aware of the similarity of interests of the proletariat and peasantry (they being largely the very same people in Russia at that time), it would be a lot easier to swallow the 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry' scam. Lenin continued: (p. 429): "It seems paradoxical that the growth of small (sometimes even "independent") industries should be an expression of the growth of capitalist manufacture: nevertheless it is a fact. The "independence" of such "handicraftsmen" is quite fictitious. Their work could not be done, and their product would on occasion even have no use-value, if there were no connection with other detailed operations, with other parts of the product. And only big capital, ruling (in one form or another) over a mass of workers performing separate operations was able* to and did create this connection. One of the main errors of Narodnik economics is that it ignores or obscures the fact that the "handicraftsman" performing a single operation is a constituent part of the capitalist manufactory.__________ "* Why is it that only capital was able to create this connection? Because, as we have seen, commodity production gives rise to the scattered condition of the small producers and to their complete differentiation, and because the small industries bequeathed to manufacture a heritage of capitalist workshops and merchant's capital." (p. 433): "The economic structure of manufacture is characterised by a far deeper differentiation among the industrialists than is the case in the small industries; differentiation in industry is paralleled by differentiation in agriculture. . . . (pp. 433-4): "If even in the West the manufacturing period of capitalism could not bring about the complete separation of the industrial workers from agriculture, in Russia, with the preservation of many institutions that tie the peasants to the land, such separation could not but be retarded. Therefore, we repeat, what is most typical of Russian capitalist manufacture is the non-agricultural centre which attracts the population of the surrounding villages - the inhabitants of which are semi-agriculturalists and semi-industrialists - and dominates these villages. "Particularly noteworthy in this connection is the fact of the higher cultural level of the population of such non-agricultural centres. A higher degree of literacy, a considerably higher standard of requirements and life, vigorous dissociation from the "rawness" of "native village soil" - such are the usual distinguishing features of the inhabitants of such centres. (p. 504): "[A]mong the agricultural population we have about 48.5 million proletarians and semi-proletarians; about 29.1 million poor small peasant farmers and their families, and about 19.4 million of the population on the well-to-do small farms. (p. 505): "For the commercial and industrial population we shall then get about 1.5 million big bourgeoisie, about 2.2 million well-to-do, about 4.8 million needy small producers, and about 13.2 million belonging to the proletarian and semi-proletarian strata of the population. "By combining the agricultural, commercial and industrial, and unproductive sections of the population, we shall get the following approximate distribution of the entire population of Russia according to class status: Total population, both sexes Big bourgeoisie, landlords, high officials, etc. about 3.0 million Well-to-do small proprietors " 23.1 " Poor small proprietors " 35.8 " Proletarians* and semi-proletarians " 63.7 _________ Total ...... 125.6 million _________* These number not less than 22 million. Lenin's figures and data show that the Russian economy was predominantly capitalist in nature, and that the proletariat and other lower classes constituted close to 80% of the total population. His facts and figures pretty well refute A.P.'s assertion that 'the Russian proletariat was a tiny minority in a uniform peasant economy.'The Alleged Absence of the American Middle Classes Point 3 of A.P.'s analysis was that 'Small owners and peasants play an insignificant role in America', and in 8 separate places, A.P. did his best to diminish the importance of American middle classes. In the 1988 edition of Small Business Data, statistics showed that in 1982, there were 3.66 million small businesses in the USA, and in 1987, small business dominated industries employed over 46 million people, or nearly half the work force, which, in itself, totally disproves A.P.'s thesis that small business plays an insignificant role in the United States. While it is true that employment on small farms has shrunk drastically over the years, for instance, from 6.7% in 1950 to 1.7% in 1990, this trend does not at all signify a corresponding shrinkage in the middle classes in general. Many farmers sold their farms to start small businesses in the city. Statistics show that the American small-business community and other middle classes are still going very strong. And even without statistics, if we only just look around us, it's easy to see that the middle classes are everywhere. While getting acquainted with SLP literature, I often ran across a number of hostile references to the middle classes, and, as part of a family that was in business on the smallest end of the scale, that caused me some concern. A.P. seemed to be writing about the class I identify with as though it wasn't low enough for people therefrom to have revolutionary aspirations, despite our proximity to wage-slavery. In fact, many wage-workers have led far more opulent lives than I ever did, so I often puzzled why A.P. was so consistently hostile toward the middle classes, until sometime after the significance of the fraud that he perpetrated had completely sunk in: In his role as 'number one proletarian', A.P. had to affect hostility against the middle classes in order to lend consistency to his theory of a dictatorship of the proletariat over the middle classes. Can the middle classes harbor revolutionary aspirations? In a January 1894 letter to Turati about prospects for revolution in Italy at that time, Engels stated (MESC, p. 444): ... "Evidently the socialist party is too young and, on account of the economic situation, too weak to be able to hope for an immediate victory of socialism. In this country the agricultural population far outweighs the urban population. There is not much large-scale industries, in the towns the typical proletariat is therefore rather small; handicraftsmen, small shopkeepers and declassed elements - a mass fluctuating between the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat - compose the majority. It is the petty and middle bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages in decay and disintegration, for the most part proletarians of the future but not yet proletarians of the present. It is this class alone which, always facing economic ruin and now driven to desperation, will be able to furnish both the bulk of fighters and the leaders of a revolutionary movement as well. It will be supported by the peasants, who are prevented from displaying any effective initiative because of the territorial fragmentation and their illiteracy, but they will nevertheless be powerful and indispensable allies." . . . From this, it is obvious that Engels did not think that a middle class background would prevent people from fighting for a socialist revolution. Marx and Engels themselves were of middle class background.Misquoting the Founders of Socialism In the next three sections, it will be shown that the three quotes from Lenin that A.P. used to 'prove' his theses were taken entirely out of context, and that the actual context proves things to the contrary of what A.P. alleged. A.P. started off with a quote from Lenin's 1917 pamphlet "The State and Revolution", from which A.P. concluded that the peasantry played an important role in production back in the times of Marx and Lenin, so the proletariat would have to take peasants into account and somehow deal with them during a revolution. Lenin described how Marx used the term "people's revolution", and how the proletariat and peasantry fit in (LCW 25, pp. 419-22): "On April 12, 1871, i.e., just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann: ""If you look up the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it [Marx's italics - the original is zerbrechen], and this is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting." . . . "The words, "to smash the bureaucratic-military machine", briefly express the principal lesson of Marxism regarding the tasks of the proletariat during a revolution in relation to the state. And it is this lesson that has been not only completely ignored, but positively distorted by the prevailing, Kautskyite, "interpretation" of Marxism! . . . "It is interesting to note, in particular, two points in the above-quoted argument of Marx. First, he restricts his conclusion to the Continent. This was understandable in 1871, when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country, but without a militarist clique and, to a considerable degree, without a bureaucracy. Marx therefore excluded Britain, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, then seemed possible, and indeed was possible, without the precondition of destroying the "ready-made state machinery". "Today, in 1917, at the time of the first great imperialist war, this restriction made by Marx is no longer valid. Both Britain and America, the biggest and the last representatives - in the whole world - of Anglo-Saxon "liberty", in the sense that they had no militarist cliques and bureaucracy, have completely sunk into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic-military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves, and suppress everything. Today, in Britain and America, too, "the precondition for every real people's revolution" is the smashing, the destruction of the "ready-made state machinery" (made and brought up to "European", general imperialist, perfection in those countries in the years 1914-17). "Secondly, particular attention should be paid to Marx's extremely profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic-military machine is "the precondition for every real people's revolution". This idea of a "people's" revolution seems strange coming from Marx, so that the Russian Plekhanovites and Mensheviks, those followers of Struve who wish to be regarded as Marxists, might possibly declare such an expression to be a "slip of the pen" on Marx's part. They have reduced Marxism to such a state of wretchedly liberal distortion that nothing exists for them beyond the antithesis between bourgeois revolution and proletarian revolution, and even this antithesis they interpret in an utterly lifeless way. "If we take the revolutions of the twentieth century as examples we shall, of course, have to admit that the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, however, is a "people's" revolution, since in neither does the mass of the people, their vast majority, come out actively, independently, with their own economic and political demands to any noticeable degree. By contrast, although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such "brilliant" successes as at times fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real People's" revolution, since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempts to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed. "In Europe, in 1871, the proletariat did not constitute the majority of the people in any country on the Continent. A "people's" revolution, one actually sweeping the majority into its stream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then constituted the "people". These two classes are united by the fact that the "bureaucratic- military state machine" oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To smash this machine, to break it up, is truly in the interest of the "people", of their majority, of the workers and most of the peasants, is "the precondition" for a free alliance of the poor peasants and the proletarians, whereas without such an alliance democracy is unstable and socialist transformation is impossible. "As is well known, the Paris Commune was actually working its way toward such an alliance, although it did not reach its goal owing to a number of circumstances, internal and external. "Consequently, in speaking of a "real people's revolution", Marx, without in the least discounting the special features of the petty bourgeoisie (he spoke a great deal about them and often), took strict account of the actual balance of class forces in most of the continental countries of Europe in 1871. On the other hand, he stated that the "smashing" of the state machine was required by the interests of both the workers and the peasants, that it united them, that it placed before them the common task of removing the "parasite" and of replacing it by something new. "By what exactly?" The next section of Lenin's "The State and Revolution" was entitled "What is to Replace the Smashed State Machine?" and it didn't mention the SLP's Socialist Industrial Union Program at all. Rather, Marx observed that a democratic republic of a new type - which came to be known as the Paris Commune - replaced the old state machine. Let us now recap a very important point from the long section quoted above. We saw the actual context of the term "people's revolution" as it was used by both Marx and Lenin, and how it embraced both the proletariat and the peasantry. Between the proletariat and peasantry there was to be a free alliance, and unity between the two against the parasitic bureaucratic-military state machine protecting the interests of the upper classes, but nowhere was there a hint about conflict or hostility between the lower classes. A.P. could not have lifted that little quote out of Lenin without failing to take note of its context of a worker-peasant alliance against the old state machine, but he chose to ignore - not only that alliance in its entirety - but also the real meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat over the wealthiest landowners and capitalists, and the smashing of their old state machinery.'Defeating' the Middle Classes The second quote from Lenin was used by A.P. to create the impression that the proletariat and the middle classes would engage in a battle against each other. A.P. loosely quoted Lenin (p. 42): ""To defeat the great, centralized bourgeoisie is a thousand times easier than to 'defeat' millions and millions of small owners who in their daily, imperceptible, inconspicuous but demoralizing activities achieve the very results desired by the bourgeoisie, and restore the bourgeoisie." ("Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder.")" Was Lenin alluding to a battle between the proletariat and middle classes? A.P.'s version readily imparts that impression, so let's compare it to the official version of "'Left-Wing' Communism - An Infantile Disorder" (LCW 31, pp. 44-45): "From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism's collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher. We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat's conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter. The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists - that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work. They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty- bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully, and victoriously. The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle - bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative - against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully. It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to "vanquish" the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie." Back in the days of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the abolition of class distinctions was envisioned as taking place only during the era of proletarian dictatorship, during which era of working class political supremacy, the proletariat was to cooperate with the middle classes, and not try to defeat them militarily. All class distinctions were to be abolished during the historical period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat, facilitating society's ascension to a higher phase of classless, stateless communism. Lenin had not at all discussed or proposed a battle between the peasantry and proletariat, and A.P. could not have avoided becoming aware of that very point.Proletarian Dictatorship ... over the Peasantry? A.P.'s use of yet another quote from Lenin strongly created the impression that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a dictatorship over the peasantry. The next excerpt is the particular one, which, when proved irrevocably to myself to have been taken entirely out of context, caused me to lose my appetite back in 1976, as I learned that A.P. had committed nothing less than gross fraud upon the Party and the working classes (pp. 42-3 of PD vs. D+D):P: "So important a factor is the presence of a peasantry considered by Lenin, that he observes (in his refutation of Kautsky's plea for "bourgeois democracy") that "if Kautsky had still remembered it, he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producer is predominant." ("The Proletarian Revolution.") The logic of this statement is that in a country where this peasantry is conspicuous by its complete absence ... there is no need of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the contemporaneous sense of continental Europe of 1871 or Russia of 1917." Let's determine what the logic of Lenin's statement actually was: Not long after Karl Kautsky had written a pamphlet entitled "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat", Lenin claimed that Kautsky had falsified almost every one of Marx's theories of proletarian dictatorship. Because Lenin believed that the proletarian dictatorship was becoming a practical matter in many countries near the end of World War One, he felt it necessary to try to set straight the theory of that dictatorship by refuting all of Kautsky's alleged falsifications. Lenin directly quoted Kautsky only three tiny paragraphs away from the place where A.P. had taken his snip of a quote, so it would have been impossible for A.P. to have misconstrued the intent of Lenin's refutation (LCW 28, pp. 296-7):L: "Secondly, my dear theoretician, have you considered the fact that the small peasant producer inevitably vacillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? This Marxist truth, which has been confirmed by the whole modern history of Europe, Kautsky very conveniently "forgot", for it simply demolishes the Menshevik "theory" that he keeps repeating! Had Kautsky not "forgotten" this he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producers predominate. "Let us examine the main content of our theoretician's "economic analysis". "That Soviet power is a dictatorship cannot be disputed, says Kautsky. "But is it a dictatorship of the proletariat?" (P. 34.)K: ""According to the Soviet Constitution, the peasants form the majority of the population entitled to participate in legislation and administration. What is presented to us as a dictatorship of the proletariat would prove to be - if carried out consistently, and if, generally speaking, a class could directly exercise a dictatorship, which in reality can only be exercised by a party - a dictatorship of the peasants" (p. 35).L: "And, highly elated over so profound and clever an argument, our good Kautsky tries to be witty and says: "It would appear, therefore, that the most painless achievement of socialism is best assured when it is put in the hands of the peasants" (p. 35)." According to Lenin, Kautsky ignored the data on the class composition of the soviets, and then erroneously framed his arguments in terms of a dictatorship of the peasantry over the bourgeoisie, rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. Lenin countered that the proletariat was better suited to leading a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie than was the peasantry, simply because '.. the small peasant producer inevitably vacillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie', and thus would not be as good at leading the majority of the exploited in the uncompromising, unvacillating way that the proletarian representatives allegedly could lead them. The vacillation of the peasantry was what Kautsky allegedly 'forgot', and that is why Lenin phrased the sentence the way that he did, not anticipating that, a decade later, Arnold Petersen would seize upon Lenin's phrase: '.. he could not have denied the need for a proletarian dictatorship in a country in which the small peasant producers predominate ..', remove it from its context, and completely misconstrue it to mean that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry and middle classes.' But, by not sitting back and taking A.P.'s word for gospel, and by instead going back to the original text of Lenin's "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", it is easy enough to determine that the quote in question did not in the least indicate that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry'. That example made it obvious to me that, if A.P. had even the slightest shred of integrity, he would never have used that quote in the way that he did, especially with so much evidence to the contrary surrounding the very quote that he took out of context. Sadly, as the reader will see, A.P. played this very same trick over and over again, proving his criminal intent to commit the filthiest kind of fraud on the less experienced workers, as well as on the rank-and-file members of the SLP. As I began rereading "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism" with a critical eye, and was informed by A.P. that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a dictatorship over the peasantry, I didn't immediately recognize exactly what he was trying to say, since he never explicitly compared his theory to that of the founders of socialism, nor did he declare himself to be right and all the others wrong. Rather, he redefined the dictatorship in a sneaky way, more by implication than proclamation, and by letting readers draw their own conclusions from the quotes out of context. Since the Party study class that I had attended in my early days of Party involvement also tried to sweep the dictatorship of the proletariat under the rug by merely asserting that it would be inappropriate for the USA, it would be easy for a naive and/or new member to take the SLP definition as gospel and never question it again. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that 'non-issues are always non-issues, the case is closed, and it is of little value to rehash settled arguments'. Nowadays, proletarian dictatorship in the USA and in other republics may very well have become inappropriate, but not for the reasons that A.P. gave, one of which included:"Conditions!" Some time before my discovery of A.P.'s fraud, and as I explored works of Lenin and others, I often ran across the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", and learned to always interpret it as a proletarian dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, and nothing other than that. As I understood the dictatorship, what with the way Lenin stressed its importance for the industrialized countries in "State and Revolution" and elsewhere, I would sometimes enter into idle discussion with my Comrades about 'the possible necessity of a proletarian dictatorship in the USA after our revolution'. Among the Weekly People writers, I never had any doubt that they knew that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, and that, from the context of our conversations, they at least held open the possibility that 'it might be required in the USA after our revolution.' But, the general membership always strongly resisted using that term in an American context, and I would consistently be reminded that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat would not be necessary in this country.' As I gradually learned to press them for a specific reason as to why it would not be necessary, they consistently gave the reason as "Conditions!". The first time that it happened, I might have been embarrassed by my failure to remember this important SLP theoretical standpoint, and I might have kicked myself with, "Of course, silly, ... Conditions!" But after I recovered from my embarrassment and thought about it enough times, "Conditions!" became less and less adequate as an answer. In subsequent conversations, I prompted myself to ask "Which conditions?", and I eventually got them to say something to the effect: "The relatively advanced means of production in this country compared to those of the old days, or to those in the Soviet Union." But even that expanded reason soon failed to satisfy my slow-but-inquiring mind, and I pestered one of them to the point of annoyance, as it just didn't logically follow that an economic fact of life could preclude the necessity of a political institution. It seemed so easy for some members to accept and repeat that minuscule "Conditions!" explanation that I often wondered if the reason I could not understand it was due to some kind of incapacity on my part. After all, in spite of all of my dreams and ambitions, I'd been stuck in ordinary working class jobs all my life and had yet to graduate from manual to mental labor. There was little in my record to indicate anything but a continuation of physical labor for the rest of my life, and I even took this as a sign that my long-dreamed-of equality to others would never be achieved. It hardly occurred to me at that time to wonder if other members also understood the proletarian dictatorship as a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, instead of over the peasantry and middle classes. The matter was as settled with me as the association of milk with cows, and I really couldn't imagine other members regarding the proletarian dictatorshipany other way. Unless they had just finished reading "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism" in order to 'correct' themselves, they might have had the same gut feeling about the dictatorship as I did, and it probably would have been just as easy for them to forget A.P.'s redefinition, especially since he was never brazen enough to come out and blatantly define it as a dictatorship over the middle classes, anyway. None of the members with whom I discussed the issue would repeat A.P.'s redefinition of the proletarian dictatorship as a dictatorship over peasants, but they did remember and repeat the plausible thesis that 'American capitalist productive relations are far in advance of Soviet productive relations' ("conditions"), 'so the dictatorship of the proletariat is not necessary in America', which, when you really think about it, makes little more sense than, say, 'Americans have more grain than Russia; so capital punishment isn't necessary.' But, since the more influential members repeated it, others were led to repeat it as well, and it might have stood with them as solidly as any fact. How many hundreds - or maybe even thousands - of socialists had it been incontrovertibly "proven" to them by A.P.'s quotes out of context that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat is not necessary in the USA'? On the other hand, what if the members had been able to tell me that I would be mistaken to advocate a dictatorship of the proletariat in the USA, and that the reason that I would be mistaken was that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship over the peasantry and middle classes? And, because middle classes aren't predominate in the USA, compared to Russia in 1917, then America doesn't need a proletarian dictatorship over classes that are mostly absent.' Well, if that had been what they were willing or able to tell me, then I could have understood that argument very well! That would have been a plausible argument that would have been quite acceptable to me at the time, and I might have been able to live very happily with it, provided that I had not already educated myself as to the dictatorship's real definition. That would have been the only catch. So, why couldn't the other members have "corrected" me? Was it because the notion of a proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry and other natural allies is such a piece of drivel that not even SLP members could bring themselves to repeat it? Also, what if the members had been able to explain their "conditions" argument by saying that the "conditions" to which they referred meant the fact that the industrially advanced world lives mostly in democratic republics, where the lower classes are free to organize politically to pressure governments to improve health benefits, working conditions, shorten the length of the work-day, etc., and for those reasons, we do not need a proletarian dictatorship? That explanation certainly would have gone against Party teachings, and may not have been revolutionary enough of an argument for me to accept at the time, but such reforms remain the only logical means by which the working class can get what it wants.Another Contradiction It's interesting how contradictions in A.P.'s theses keep on popping up. A proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry can only mean that the proletarian dictatorship has to be a form of proletarian state power. What else could it mean, given the definition of the state as the means of oppression of one class over others? If 'the peasantry and other small owners would have to be convinced that it is in their interest to support the proletarian revolution, or be subjected to forcible repression in the interest of that revolution', then the dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry sounds like a form of proletarian state power to me. But, as we shall see in Part III, SLP leaders poured a lot of energy into denying the possibility of proletarian state power. One could ask two questions here: 1) If 'proletarian state power over the peasantry' is conceivable, then why not 'proletarian state power over the bourgeoisie'? and, 2) if 'the only form of state power that can exist is bourgeois state power', then why was it that 'proletarian state power over the peasantry and other classes' was capable of being formulated at all? How many SLP members might have been expelled for discovering and trying to point out these contradictions? A.P. was quite willing to allow the proletariat to consider oppression against the middle classes, but would not for a moment allow the proletariat to consider oppression against the uppermost classes - the real class enemies of the proletariat - and the classes for whom A.P. must have been working all along.Viva la Republique! While searching for the real meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, I also searched through the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin for even the slightest hint that the dictatorship would not be necessary in some capitalist countries due to advances in the means of production, but I found absolutely nothing along those lines. What I did find, however, was the possibility that, due to the existence of democracies in some capitalist countries, such as in the USA and England back then, it might be possible for workers' parties to come to power bloodlessly through democratic devices like elections. I also found that Marx and Engels had put in a considerable amount of effort rebutting utopians who wasted a considerable amount of ink and paper speculating on the future form of the coming socialist paradise. Engels hoped to put a lot of that kind of speculation to rest when he wrote, in his "Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891", that (MESW III, p. 435): ... "This forgetting of the great, the principal considerations for the momentary interests of the day, this struggling and striving for the success of the moment regardless of later consequences, this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present, may be "honestly" meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and "honest" opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all! "Which are these ticklish, but very significant points? "First. If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown." In an August 1883 letter to Bernstein, Engels compared the roles of the monarchy and the democratic republic (MESC, pp. 342-3): ... "The part played by the Bonapartist monarchy (the characteristic features of which have been set forth by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire and by me in The Housing Question, II, and elsewhere) in the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie is similar to the part the old absolute monarchy played in the struggle between feudalism and bourgeoisie. But just as this struggle could not be fought out under the old absolute monarchy but only in a constitutional one (England, France 1789-1792 and 1815-1830), so that between bourgeoisie and proletariat can only be fought out in a republic. If therefore favourable conditions and a revolutionary past helped the French to overthrow Bonaparte and set up a bourgeois republic, the French possess the advantage over us {in Germany}, who are still floundering in a hotchpotch of semi-feudalism and Bonapartism, in that they already possess the form in which the struggle must be fought out whereas we still have to conquer it. Politically they are a whole stage ahead of us. The result of a monarchist restoration in France would therefore be that the struggle for the restoration of the bourgeois republic would again be put on the order of the day. But the continuing existence of the republic on the other hand signifies increased intensification of the direct unconcealed class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie until a crisis is reached. "In our country too the first and direct result of the revolution with regard to the form can and must be nothing but the bourgeois republic. But this will be here only a brief transitional period because fortunately we do not have a purely republican bourgeois party. The bourgeois republic, headed perhaps by the Progressive Party, will enable us in the beginning to win over the great masses of the workers to revolutionary socialism. This will be done in one or two years and will lead to the utter exhaustion and self-destruction of all intermediate parties that may still exist apart from our Party. Only then can we successfully take over. "The big mistake the Germans make is to think that the revolution is something that can be made overnight. As a matter of fact it is a process of development of the masses that takes several years even under conditions accelerating this process. Any revolution completed overnight removed only a reaction that was hopeless at the very start (1830) or led directly to the opposite of what had been aspired to (1848, France)." Those are but a few of the many references in the works and correspondence of Marx and Engels to the democratic republic as the specific form of proletarian rule and dictatorship, i.e., the form that the proletariat would use to abolish class distinctions after acquiring political supremacy. Anyone who would deny that significance of the democratic republic to Marx and Engels is not proceeding from personal knowledge of their writings, or, as in A.P.'s case, is just plain lying. A major contribution of Marx and Engels to the working class movement was their writing down of observations of what the proletariat actually DID throughout history. The theory of proletarian dictatorship was derived from what the proletariat actually DID, at least in embryo, in the struggles for power in France in 1789-93, 1830, 1848, 1871, and in other countries at other times. More on this later.The Resolution With what I was learning about the fraud that had been perpetrated in A.P.'s pamphlet, I decided that it was time to start fulfilling my promise to myself not be a willing party to that fraud, so I put aside many of the fears I had harbored about alienating my Comrades too much, and prepared a four-page report on what I considered to be the worst of the distortions in A.P.'s pamphlet, presented it to Section Santa Clara, and we read it over together. My apprehensions were excruciatingly intense. But, what happened after I distributed my analysis of "PD vs. D+D" to the Section? ... Nothing, of course. What did I expect? A revolution within the Party? In my naiveté, I think that I expected everything to change. A word about quality. My original four-page analysis was nowhere near as fully developed as the analysis pursued in the last many pages because I was so new to that kind of intrigue and method of analysis, and I was too afraid of a cataclysmic failure or success to really push a lot of conclusions that lay between the lines or were merely implied by my analysis. I even apologized on a fifth page for the few conclusions I allowed myself to put in writing. I erred on the side of over-caution because I was so financially insecure and was afraid of too quickly unleashing forces that might have landed me out on the street with nowhere to go, and with no money to get there. So, after waiting for a little while to see if anything at all would happen of its own accord, and seeing absolutely nothing happen, I decided to help things along with a resolution that the Section could not possibly ignore. The resolution pointed out the denial of the worker-peasant alliance, the redefinition of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a dictatorship over the peasantry instead of over the bourgeoisie, the quote out of context from Lenin's "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", and on the basis of these few incidents of fraud out of the literally dozens of others in that one pamphlet, the resolution recommended the removal of the pamphlet from circulation, and its retrieval from whatever public libraries in which it may have been placed. In order to drive home the point about the worker-peasant alliance, I appended an eleven-page set of quotes from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Lewin's 1966 book, "The Russian Peasants and Soviet Power", all of which confirmed the necessity of alliances between the proletariat and other lower classes. To deal with the resolution, the Section elected a sub-committee to look into the merit of my arguments, and after they took a couple of weeks to digest the material, the resolution was brought up as an order of business. During the discussion, most members would agree only that the pamphlet was 'terrible', but no one was willing to admit that A.P.'s deceptions were deliberate. One of the intellectuals convinced the Section to reject the resolution, and the lame excuse he gave revolved around the alleged "bulkiness" of the resolution, which, combined with supporting documentation totaled all of 19 pages. My notebooks from that period indicate another reason the Section gave for not discarding the pamphlet - the Party had nothing with which to replace it! Someone must have thought that a pack of lies should not be withdrawn until something else (or another pack of lies) could take its place, and in the meantime, we should keep on distributing the lies. Such a code of ethics! Or, was it expediency? Either way, though, the merit of my arguments didn't seem to be an issue at all, which made me feel like my work was vindicated; but, later on, I began to suspect that I had actually been swindled. The intellectuals could easily have helped me to do something about the resolution's "bulkiness" so it could have gone up to higher bodies. It seemed as though they were quite willing to let A.P.'s lies go on spreading, rather than to openly admit that they exist at all. I thought that my resolution would help get the badly needed 'revolution within the Party' off to a start, but I guess no one else saw it that way. After the dust settled and I had a chance to re-assess the situation, I began to lose hope of working with anyone in my Section or the NO to help right the wrongs of the Party, but I remained committed to my original goal of giving the membership a chance to acquit itself. What this episode also signified was that the dimly anticipated and dreaded state of war between myself and my intellectual Comrades over a real issue was beginning to materialize.My Meeting with the National Secretary Not long after that disappointing Section meeting, the National Secretary invited all NO workers to submit ideas about what should be discussed at the next NEC Session. It appears from my notes that I did submit something along the lines of the information I presented in my original resolution to the Section, but probably in a condensed form. One day, as expected, I was summoned by the NS to explain a little of what I had written about. With a heavy heart, I verbalized my arguments for awhile. Then, in a tone of voice I found rather intimidating, he asked if I was implying that A.P. was a charlatan. Well, deep down, of course, I knew that A.P. was a charlatan, but, what with the gravity of the tone of his inquiry, I figured that I had better not state my true feelings on the matter. The person who was asking the question had hired me a year and a half before, and he also had the power to fire me as well. Not wishing for my mission in the Party to come to an abrupt end, I feared that a totally honest answer could have precipitated my immediate dismissal, so I watered down my answer accordingly. So, I held off from my grand conclusion in front of the NS, and retired back to my desk feeling frustrated and angry with myself, wishing that I had the guts to throw caution to the winds and tell the NS exactly what I thought. I also wondered whether it was a reasonable fear of getting fired, or just cowardice that had prevented me from giving a complete answer. It seemed like it was a golden opportunity lost forever, and I kicked myself for quite a while afterwards. If the NS had been the honest person that I had at one time hoped he was, I had a golden opportunity right then to fully inform him of my concerns. But, something in his tone caused me to back off. I yearned for an immediate public trial for my issues, and I yearned for the immediate ability to put my issues across in a convincing way. Would that day and that ability ever arrive? About my strained relationships with my co-workers, I drafted the following to a Comrade back East: "Working at the NO, I learned about the sordidness of internal Party life. While I was still trusted by the top and my loyalty was unquestioned, some interesting discussions would sometimes take place during which I gradually observed that only half-truths were being expressed about how bad the situation really was. I had the feeling that I was an outsider and that a lot of far more important and candid conversations were being held outside of my presence and that I was merely being used." One of the difficult rules that Party members have to endure is that internal Party affairs are basically secret stuff and must not be shared with relatives, friends or sympathizers. I always used to wonder what the big deal was. After all, it wasn't as though we were plotting the violent overthrow of the United States government, or anything like that. Before I was under the stress of knowing that I was participating in the lies of the Party, I was also good friends with a couple of sympathizers, and when I finally discovered the dirt on the Party, it was absolute torture having to keep everything that I knew from those friends. I wanted so badly to tell them what was going on at times, but I was afraid that another member would find out and press charges against me, so I kept my mouth shut and gritted my teeth and pledged to myself not to stray from standard Party procedures. Consequently, that period of my life was a worse hell than usual. I didn't appreciate having to shut down any aspect of what remained of my non-Party life, but I did anyway, for the sake of being legal and not having to be paranoid about information about my 'mouth being out of control' getting back to my Comrades. When I could no longer hold back discussing issues with members outside of my Section, I drafted the following to one of them: 'After reading this you may understand why I have shut myself off from contacts and sympathizers such as [X]. I was really on the horns of a dilemma for awhile about relating to sympathizers and felt uncomfortable with them for the longest while and still do. I like to tell people everything I know and feel, and I hate like hell to have to hide anything, but how could I tell someone outside the Party that we have really "blown it"? So I didn't see [X] at all after May Day and now he's back at [Z]. I feel guilty in the way the whole thing went and I wish I had a twin brother right now who could go out to [Z] and tell [X] just what goes on. That I would love to do. [X] must surely think that we are a strange group and I couldn't blame him a bit. A Party that has so many lies to defend has to be a little "above it all".' After the dust settled from those meetings, and after a period of sulking, moaning, withdrawing and wishing I was far, far away, I decided to keep on working at the NO because I was still quite broke and couldn't afford to leave my job, and I was determined to get busy on my next exposé. In that next work, I was going to pull out all the stops and not hold anything back in my conclusions, as I had in my analysis of "PD vs. D+D". I was determined that the next analysis of another of A.P.'s 'masterpieces' was going to make them either stand up, take notice, and expel me, or else they were going to see the light and start moving in the right direction. But, in the end, they did neither.(End Part B. Continued in Part C.)(Part C)PART THREE: THE NATURE OF THE STATEA.P.'s Preface to: "Socialism: From Utopia to Science" Text coloring decodes as follows: Black: Ken Ellis Red: Marx, Engels, Lenin Green: Uncontested info, etc. Blue: Correspondent, adversary, SLP-related Purple: Unreliable Info Brown: Inaccurate quote, but true to intent To embark upon this more militant venture, I needed to find another work that contained lots of theory and had many quotes from the founders of socialism. I had also become curious about the Socialist Labor Party's position on 'state power', which is also relevant to their rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat. I found just what I was looking for in Arnold Petersen's 1947 Preface to a SLP reprint of Engels' pamphlet: "The Development of Socialism From Utopia to Science" (which pamphlet, in his correspondence, Engels often referred to as his 'Entwicklung' - the German word for 'development'). What follows is the analysis I worked on during the last few months of '76, toward the end of my "career" with the Socialist Labor Party. The present version of the analysis is a rather extensive expansion of the original, but the general format is similar: A.P.'s text was split into seventeen parts, and each part is analyzed separately. The pages of A.P.'s Preface were numbered in Roman Numerals, and are included for reference. The cover page of my original analysis included quotes that bore directly on A.P.'s theses, so my cover page is reproduced here, slightly augmented from the original:____________________________________________________Analysis of Arnold Petersen's Preface to: Engels': "Socialism: From Utopia to Science"1 - "[E]ach political party sets out to establish its rule in the state" ...2 - "As soon as our Party is in possession of political power it has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors just like the manufacturers in industry. Whether this expropriation is to be compensated for or not will to a great extent depend not upon us but the circumstances under which we obtain power, and particularly upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big landowners themselves. We by no means consider compensation as impermissible in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!) that in his opinion we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them."3 - "If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown."_____4 - "Anarchy, then, is the great war-horse of their master Bakunin, who has taken nothing from the socialist systems except a set of slogans. What all socialists understand by anarchy is this: once the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, has been obtained, the power of the State, which serves to keep the great majority of producers under the yoke of a numerically small exploiting minority, disappears, and the functions of government are transformed into simple administrative functions. The Alliance puts matters the other way round. It proclaims anarchy in the proletarian ranks as the surest means of breaking the powerful concentration of social and political forces in the hands of the exploiters. Under this pretext it demands of the International, at the very moment when the old world is seeking to crush it, that it should replace its organisation by anarchy ..."5 - "Although the anarchist caricature of the working class movement has long since passed its zenith, the European and American governments are still so interested in its continued existence and are spending such large sums of money in its support, that we cannot entirely disregard the anarchists' heroic exploits ..."1 Engels, "The Housing Question", 1872, MESW II, p. 356 2 Engels, Nov. 1894, "The Peasant Question in France and Germany", MESW III, p. 474 3 Engels, Jun. 1891,"Critique of Draft Social Democratic Program", MESW III, p.435 4 Marx and Engels, Jun. 19, 1873, "Fictitious Splits in International", NW 153, p. 74 5 Engels, Jan. 3, 1894, Note from "The Bakuninists at Work" NW 153, p.125MESW = Marx and Engels, Selected Works in 3 volumes, Progress Publishers, 1973 NW 153 = Anarchism+Anarcho-Syndicalism, New World Paperback, 1972by: Ken Ellis October 24, 1976______________________________________Analysis of Petersen's Preface SLP 'translations' have a history of being terrible. In an October 24, 1891 letter to Sorge, Engels criticized the SLP for pirating his "The Development of Socialism From Utopia to Science" pamphlet, and then butchering its translation (MESC, p. 411): ... "[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] will be published here in a translation prepared by Aveling and edited by me ... In face of this authorised translation the American pirate edition with its miserable English will be rather innocuous. It is moreover not even complete, whatever they found too difficult they have left out" ... Some members have made excuses for some of the "flaws" or "discrepancies" within Party literature, including: 1) "There were differences in translations between the literature that the SLP relied upon and what others relied upon", and 2) "The early Party authors didn't have access to all the works that modern scholars do." Those were some of the excuses I heard from experienced members during my early Party involvement. Aside from the very poor translations, there is also the matter of faking 'translations' to aid and abet the process of confusing and falsifying socialist ideas and principles. The Marxist theory of the state was well illuminated by Engels throughout his pamphlet. In his Preface thereto, however, A.P. felt it necessary to criticize that theory as outdated and deficient so that he could posit the SLP's Socialist Industrial Union program as a solution to the 'problems' that he found within Marxism, but A.P.'s 'solutions' created even more problems. On page XI of his Preface, A.P. began 'correcting' his very own distortions of the Marxist theory of the state (p. XI):1 "Engels's work speaks for itself. However, a certain section of the work requires brief comment and explanation. Reference is here made to the famous passages in which Engels outlines the passing of capitalism to Socialism. Engels wrote: "While it ["the capitalist mode of production"] forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized [i.e., social production, albeit under private ownership], into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property." (Italics in original.)" This passage outlined the prelude to, and the culmination of, the revolutionary act. A.P.'s very next words followed thus (p. XI): "And again: 'When at last it [the State] becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection .... a repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary .... the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. [Italics ours.] The State is not 'abolished.' It dies out." (Italics in original.)" This collection of rather disconnected snippets described the final stages of the transition to classless, stateless society. Conspicuous by its absence between A.P.'s excerpts was any passage descriptive of the state or classes during the proletarian dictatorship. Such a passage, omitted by A.P. right after the part about 'the proletariat seizing political power and turning the means of production into state property', went as follows (MESW III, p. 146): "But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state." These were to be some important tasks for the proletariat during its dictatorship. The paragraphs entitled "III. Proletarian Revolution" on page 67 of the SLP edition of Engels' pamphlet are also consistent with the tasks of the proletariat during its dictatorship (MESW III, p. 151): "III. Proletarian Revolution - Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialised character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the state dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organisation, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master - free. "To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism." {End of Engels' pamphlet.} The reason why A.P. jumped from capitalism to classless, stateless society, and omitted the dictatorship of the proletariat, was to set the stage for his next major theoretical thrust (p. XI):2 "Engels here admirably outlines the process toward what we now call "State Capitalism."" Engels would have been the last to confuse socialism with state capitalism, a concept that was quite well understood, and had already been criticized quite thoroughly. As an example, the Prussian state of the time supposedly was an example of state capitalism at work. Engels explained in his pamphlet that private capitalism would evolve into state capitalism, as production on a broadly social basis previewed a future state-ownership mode of production, one in which all of the decisions would be made by salaried employees, and in which the capitalists would no longer be in direct control. Even in the text of the same pamphlet that A.P. prefaced, in a footnote on page 55 of the SLP's edition of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", Engels attacked the "spurious socialism" of those who declared all state ownership to be socialistic (MESW III, p. 144): ... "For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state has become economically inevitable, only then - even if it is the state of today that effects this - is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for state ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkeyism that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the state the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes - this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor shops of the Army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the state of the brothels." A.P.'s absurd allegation that Engels did not know the difference between socialism and state capitalism was amply disproved by the very text of the pamphlet for which A.P. wrote his Preface. Since A.P. also quoted its text, he also had to have read it, so what excuse could he have had for his absurd charge that 'The socialism of Engels equals state capitalism', unless his misrepresentation was only setting the stage for what followed (p. XI):3 "He assumed, however, that, once the proletariat had "seized political power," the transformation into Socialism would follow as a matter of course. We know better today." This 'matter of course transformation into socialism' theory just happens to adequately assess Engels' assumption. Marx himself stated that "One day the worker will have to seize political supremacy to establish the new organisation of labour". One would not ordinarily expect a socialist theoretician to criticize Engels' assumption as incorrect, but such faulty critiques occur often in A.P.'s writings. The problems created by his faulty critiques then justified the creation of new solutions, such as the Party's SIU program. When the most essential aspects of Marxism became fair targets for A.P.'s attacks, the results often contradicted themselves. For example, the 'matter of course transformation into socialism' theory ascribed to Engels just happens to contradict a certain 'three-fold obstacle' theory that A.P. also ascribed to Marx and Engels in "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism" (pp. 25-6): "For he {Lenin}, as well as Engels and his contemporaries, proceeded on the assumption that the victorious proletariat would have three main factors to deal with before instituting Socialism proper. First, a powerful and potent, though temporarily beaten, capitalist class; second, a numerically strong petty bourgeois and peasant element, with the actual proletariat everywhere in the minority; and third, an insufficient industrial development. Throughout all the writings of Marx and Engels on this subject (and the same holds true of the writings of Lenin, who in industrially backward Russia largely faced the same situation generally prevailing at the time of the Paris Commune), Marx and Engels reverted to that three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success." In "PD vs. D+D", the 'three-fold obstacle to socialism' theory was ascribed to Marx and Engels; but, in A.P.'s Preface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", we find instead ascribed to Engels the theory that - '.. once the proletariat had "seized political power," the transformation into Socialism would follow as a matter of course.' If only A.P. were still alive, he would no doubt tell us which theory he wanted us to use. Or, did the founders of socialism describe the achievement of socialism both ways, and, if so, where's the documentation for 'the three-fold obstacle theory'? In his Preface, A.P. did not at all seem to mind labeling the result of the political victory of the working class as 'state capitalism'; but, why didn't this alleged state capitalism find a three-fold obstacle in its path? In one pamphlet, 'proletarian victory would confront a three-fold obstacle', while in A.P.'s other pamphlet, 'proletarian victory would yield only state capitalism'; but the consistency between the two scenarios was that, in both cases, 'proletarian victory was spoiled as the result of having been obtained politically'. No matter which of the two scenarios was fated to happen, the proletariat allegedly would meet only with danger or defeat if they were to use political solutions. A.P. continued (p. XI):4 "It was the genius of De Leon which perceived that to transform private capitalist property into "State property" amounted to consolidating all economic power into the hands of a few capitalists, leaving the workers empty-handed, their political victory rendered null and void by reason of this capitalist State-consolidated economic power." One could ask just how stupid a working class would have to be in order to convert all of the means of production into capitalist state property in the belief that this was the program of socialism. This has all of the appearance of a straw man theory that it doesn't take a genius to demolish, for it is clear from Engels' text that the state property into which the means of production was to be converted was the state property of the armed workers, rather than the capitalist state. And, look at where the straw man theory takes us: look at the horror reflected in the loss of all of that economic power, that economic loss supposedly rendering the political victory null and void, as if the whole revolution revolved around capturing economic power, or the means of production. This pattern shows up over and over. Sometimes one can cover up a falsification of theory by describing it as a stroke of genius. One could do well to remember WW2, when it was theorized that 'if a big lie was repeated often enough, the masses would soon take it for gospel.' This 'politics-negating' aspect of De Leonism is a key to understanding how it differs from Marxism, for De Leonism holds that 'All state power is capitalist state power', and 'Workers' state power is illogical and inconceivable for the USA.' Also, let us look more closely at our premises. If one were to interpret the 'political victory' of the workers as a simple electoral victory at the ballot box, then A.P.'s scenario of 'consolidating all economic power into the hands of a few capitalists' is not implausible; for, even after the political victory of the workers' party at the ballot box, the elements of force in the state remain in the hands of the capitalist class, and if the program of the workers' party included 'transforming private capitalist property into "State property"', then private capitalist property would become the property of the capitalist state. But, what, precisely, is this particular scenario? De Leon certainly was not criticizing the Marxist theory of the state, what with its smashing up of the old state apparatus, and its replacement with a workers' state. What De Leon criticized here was merely the Social-Democratic, or reform-socialist, or state-socialist, or state-ownership theory of the state that A.P. accused Engels of not being able to move beyond. That theory equates socialism with state ownership of the means of production, and implies that, in a democratic republic, 'socialism can be peacefully achieved by concentrating the means of production into the hands of the state'. Regardless of whether that's a good idea or not, the fraud element materialized when the state ownership theory was labeled by A.P. and De Leon as the Marxist theory. To the hard-line, Marxist, smash-the-state type of theorist, what's missing in the state socialist theory is the element of revolution, i.e., the smashing of the bourgeois state, and its replacement by the proletarian state. According to Marxist theory, the proletariat transforms both capitalist state property and capitalist private property into proletarian state property. The machinery of state that preserved capitalist relations of production and private property would be replaced by the state of the armed workers. State power in the hands of the poor and oppressed would allow workers' cooperatives to compete as viable entities, while capitalists who refrained from hostility and cooperated with the new state could still count on making profits, albeit curtailed by a progressive profit or income tax. A.P. continued (p. XII):5 "The present writer has dealt in some detail with this question in an address published under the title, "Daniel De Leon: Social Architect." The following relevant passages are quoted from that address: "De Leon's concept of the Industrial Union Government in operation precluded, of course, the existence of the political State. But that the political State would cease to be under Socialism was not a conclusion born of De Leon's discovery. Both Marx and Engels had demonstrated that the State as such would die out." A.P.'s statement led his readers into a fine mass of confusion. First of all, using Lenin's definition, socialism is a form of political state, i.e., a proletarian dictatorship in evolution to classless, stateless society. On the other hand, if A.P.'s "Socialism" described classless, stateless society, then Marx and Engels never expected the proletarian revolution to yield A.P.'s "Socialism" right away. Marx and Engels knew that workers would have to possess their own state machinery in order to carry out the social revolution, i.e., abolish capital, class distinctions, and the antitheses between mental and manual labor and between town and country. It was not the capitalist state or "the State as such" that was to die out, but rather the proletarian state, during the era of proletarian dictatorship. A.P.'s concept of "the State as such" does not distinguish between capitalist and proletarian state power, so "the State as such" came in handy for those who saw the state in general as the main evil in the world, and who therefore (unlike Marx, Engels and Lenin) could not conceive of a state that could represent the interests of the poor, oppressed and working classes. If 'De Leon's government precluded the existence of the political state', then, no matter how A.P. defined it, precluding the state meant nothing less than substituting the program of anarchy for the program of socialism. Which class of people does the philosophy of anarchism represent? In 1850, Engels wrote a revealing article entitled "The Catchword: "Abolition of the State" and the German "Friends of Anarchy"" (NW 153, p. 27): "For Communists abolition of the state makes sense only as the necessary result of the abolition of classes, with whose disappearance the need for the organised power of one class for the purpose of holding down the other classes will automatically disappear. The abolition of the state in bourgeois countries means the reduction of state power to the North American level. Class contradictions there are not fully developed, and class conflicts are always palliated by the outflow of the proletarian surplus population to the West; state interference is reduced to a minimum in the East and entirely absent in the West. Abolition of the state in feudal countries means the abolition of feudalism and the establishment of a conventional bourgeois state. In Germany the slogan conceals either a cowardly flight from actual concrete struggles, the extravagant bogus transformation of bourgeois liberty into absolute freedom and independence of the individual, or finally the indifference of the bourgeois towards any form of state so long as it does not hamper the development of bourgeois interests. ... "All these factions agree in their desire to maintain the existing bourgeois society. Since they uphold bourgeois society they are bound to uphold the rule of the bourgeoisie and in Germany even the winning of this rule by the bourgeoisie; they differ from the real members of the bourgeoisie only in the matter of unusual form, which gives them the semblance of "going further", of "going further than anyone else". This semblance vanishes on all real conflicts; in every case these exponents of anarchy did their utmost to stem anarchy when faced with the real anarchy of revolutionary crises, when the masses fought with "brute force". In the final analysis this much praised "anarchy" amounts in substance to what in more advanced countries is termed "order". The "friends of anarchy" in Germany find themselves in complete and friendly agreement with the "friends of order" in France." The more things change, the more they stay the same. In a letter to Paul Lafargue in April of 1870, Marx criticized the three points of Bakunin's program (NW 153, pp. 45-6): " ... But Bakounine's programme was "the theory". It consisted, in fact of 3 points. "1) That the first requirement of the social Revolution was - the abolition of inheritance, Saint-Simoniste nonsense, of which the charlatan and ignoramus Bakunin became a responsible publisher. It is evident: If you have had the power to make the social Revolution in one day, par decret plebiscitaire, you would abolish at once landed property and capital, and would therefore have no occasion at all to occupy yourself with the right of inheritance. On the other hand, if you have not that power (and it is of course foolish to suppose such a power), the proclamation of the abolition of inheritance would be not a serious act, but a foolish menace, rallying the whole peasantry and the whole small middle-class round the reaction. Suppose for instance that the Yankees had not had the power to abolish slavery by the sword. What an imbecility it would have been to proclaim the abolition of inheritance in slaves! The whole thing rests on a superannuated idealism, which considers the actual jurisprudence as the basis of our economical state, instead of seeing that our economical state is the basis and source of our jurisprudence! As to Bakounine, all he wanted was to improvise a programme of his own making. That's all. It was a haphazard programme. "2) "Equality of different classes". To suppose on the one hand the continued existence of classes, and on the other hand the equality of the members belonging to them, this blunder shows you at once the shameless ignorance and superficiality of that fellow who made it his "special mission" to enlighten us on "theory". "3) The working class must not occupy itself with politics. They must only organise themselves by trades-unions. One fine day, by means of the Internationale they will supplant the place of all existing states. You see what a caricature he has made of my doctrines! As the transformation of the existing States into Associations is our last end, we must allow the governments, these great Trade-Unions of the ruling classes, to do as they like, because to occupy ourselves with them is to acknowledge them. Why! In the same way the old socialists said: You must not occupy yourselves with the wages question, because you want to abolish wages labour, and to struggle with the capitalist about the rate of wages is to acknowledge the wages system! The ass has not even seen that every class movement as a class movement, is necessarily and was always a political movement." In a January, 1872 letter to Cuno, Engels contrasted socialism with some Bakuninist theories (MESW II, pp. 424-30): ... "Bakunin, who up to 1868 had intrigued against the International, joined it after he had suffered a fiasco at the Berne Peace Congress {where he lost his bid to get his program endorsed} and at once began to conspire within it against the General Council. Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own, a medley of Proudhonism and communism. The chief point concerning the former is that he does not regard capital, i.e., the class antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers which has arisen through social development, but the state as the main evil to be abolished. While the great mass of the Social-Democratic workers hold our view that state power is nothing more than the organisation which the ruling classes - landowners and capitalists - have provided for themselves in order to protect their social privileges, Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of all means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one: Without a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is nonsense; the abolition of capital is precisely the social revolution and involves a change in the whole mode of production. Now then, inasmuch as to Bakunin the state is the main evil, nothing must be done which can keep the state - that is, any state, whether it be a republic, a monarchy or anything else - alive. Hence complete abstention from all politics. To commit a political act, especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayal of principle. The thing to do is to carry on propaganda, heap abuse upon the state, organise, and when all the workers, hence the majority, are won over, depose all the authorities, abolish the state and replace it with the organisation of the International. This great act, with which the millennium begins, is called social liquidation. "All this sounds extremely radical and is so simple that it can be learned by heart in five minutes; that is why the Bakuninist theory has speedily found favour also in Italy and Spain among young lawyers, doctors, and other doctrinaires. But the mass of the workers will never allow itself to be persuaded that the public affairs of their countries are not also their own affairs; they are naturally politically-minded and whoever tries to make them believe that they should leave politics alone will in the end be left in the lurch. To preach to the workers that they should in all circumstances abstain from politics is to drive them into the arms of the priests or the bourgeois republicans. "Now, as the International, according to Bakunin, was not formed for political struggle but to replace the old state organisation as soon as social liquidation takes place, it follows that it must come as near as possible to the Bakuninist ideal of future society. In this society there will above all be no authority, for authority = state = absolute evil. (How these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without a will that decides in the last resort, without single management, they of course do not tell us.) The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous; but as to how a society of even only two people is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again maintains silence. "And so the International too must be arranged according to this pattern. Every section, and in every section every individual, is to be autonomous. To hell with the Basle resolutions, which confer upon the General Council a pernicious authority demoralising even to itself! Even if this authority is conferred voluntarily it must cease just because it is authority! "Here you have in brief the main points of this swindle. But who are the originators of the Basle resolutions? Well, Mr. Bakunin himself and Company! ... ... "So long as these gentlemen keep within legal bounds the General Council will gladly let them have their way. This coalition of the most diverse elements will soon fall apart; but as soon as they start anything against the Rules or the Congress resolutions the General Council will do its duty. "If you reflect upon the fact that these people have launched their conspiracy precisely at the moment when a general hue and cry is being raised against the International, you cannot help thinking that the international sleuths must have a hand in the game. And so it is. In Beziers the Geneva Bakuninists have picked the central police commissioner [Bousquet] as their correspondent! Two prominent Bakuninists, Albert Richard from Lyons and Leblanc, were here and told a worker named Scholl, also from Lyons, to whom they had addressed themselves, that the only way to overthrow Thiers was to restore Bonaparte to the throne; and they were traveling about on Bonaparte money to conduct propaganda among the refugees in favour of a Bonapartist restoration! That is what these gentlemen call abstaining from politics! In "Marx and the Trade Unions", Lozovsky revealed some early anarchist vacillations (M+TU, p. 134): "The Proudhonists and Bakuninists, as is known, had originally been against the trade unions and against strikes, but afterwards they turned through 180 degrees and became energetic defenders of the trade unions, considering them the only form for workers' associations, and strikes as the only form of struggle." A.P. continued (p. XII):6 "Engels observed that 'the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production.' ("Socialism From Utopia to Science.") That is a happily phrased designation of the Industrial Union Government, but unhappily it is only a phrase, for Engels never worked out the actual form or details of the social organism which necessarily must take over 'the conduct of the processes of production' when the State dies out, though he does say that 'anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization.' (Ibid.) Again we ask: How, and what kind?" The two phrases from Engels juxtaposed by A.P. were from opposite ends of the era of proletarian dictatorship. The first phrase described activity at the end of the dictatorship, in its transition to classless, stateless society (MESW III, p. 147): "State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished." It dies out." The second phrase's 'replacement of anarchy by planning' was to happen right after the proletariat's conquest of political power, and continue indefinitely after. Even on page 64 of the SLP edition of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", it can easily be seen that the sentence containing 'systematic, definite organization' directly follows a sentence which is clearly post-revolutionary and embraces both the dictatorship of the proletariat and classless, stateless society (MESW III, pp. 149-50): "With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." When A.P. inserted the phrase 'anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization' right after repeating the thought 'when the State dies out', an inattentive reader could easily be led to believe that: 'Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization only after society becomes classless and stateless.' But, the era of proletarian state power was not to preclude the systematic organization of production. On the contrary, that was to be the only time it could begin in earnest, according to Engels, who labeled production under capitalism as anarchical many times in his pamphlet, as well as in many other writings. The fact that anarchy in production was to be replaced by 'systematic, definite organisation' during the era of proletarian political power is a fact that no honest commentator could have avoided becoming aware of. With regard to 'the actual form or details' of a future society, the actual experience of the proletariat in the Commune was that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was replaced - not by a classless, stateless administration of things - but rather by a workers' state using the political form of a democratic republic. Engels wrote about the form of proletarian dictatorship in several places. Especially illuminating was his March 6, 1894 letter to Lafargue (MESC, p. 447): "With respect to the proletariat the republic differs from the monarchy only in that it is the ready-for-use political form for the future rule of the proletariat. You are at an advantage compared with us in already having it; we {Germans} for our part shall have to spend twenty-four hours to make it. But a republic, like every other form of government, is determined by its content; so long as it is a form of bourgeois rule it is as hostile to us as any monarchy (except that the forms of this hostility are different). It is therefore a wholly baseless illusion to regard it as essentially socialist in form or to entrust socialist tasks to it while it is dominated by the bourgeoisie. We shall be able to wrest concessions from it but never to put in its charge the execution of what is our own concern, even if we should be able to control it by a minority strong enough to change into the majority overnight" ... Notice the implication, in the last sentence especially, of the insufficiency of an electoral victory of a workers' party in a republic to create socialism. Engels was critical of those who worshiped democracies, believing that socialism could be achieved by victories at ballot boxes, while ignoring the consequences of capitalist domination, and the corruption of politicians after taking office. In a January 1894 letter to Turati, Engels wrote about some pitfalls around electing socialists to government (MESC, p. 446): "After the common victory {with other democratic parties} we might be offered some seats in the new government, but so that we always remain a minority. That is the greatest danger. After February 1848 the French socialist democrats (of the Réforme, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Flocon, etc.) made the mistake of accepting such posts. Constituting a minority in the government they voluntarily shared the responsibility for all the infamies and treachery which the majority, composed of pure {bourgeois} Republicans, committed against the working class, while their presence in the government completely paralysed the revolutionary action of the working class which they claimed they represented." Valuable lessons are contained in these words, especially when considering the promises of those who claim to represent the interests of the poor and oppressed and then sell out those classes after getting elected. Where A.P. wrote that ... 'Engels never worked out the actual form or details of the social organism which necessarily must take over 'the conduct of the processes of production' when the State dies out' ... , A.P. created confusion on a variety of levels. After attaining political supremacy, few problems were anticipated with regard to the processes of production. The Communist Manifesto made it clear that capitalist production was to co-exist with proletarian dictatorship. Workers' parties were to be dominant in several democratic republics, so the future form of government was already well-known, the republic already having been used in various western European countries for centuries. Secondly, A.P.'s timing was all off, for the workers' government was certainly not going to wait for their state to die out before taking control over the conduct of processes of production. Thirdly, the state that dies out was implied by A.P. to be the capitalist state, whereas, of course, Engels always intended that the workers' state would be moribund. A.P. continued (p. XII):7 "Marx speaks similarly, and although his conception of the non-political, classless future society seems to be projected with greater precision, he still fails to answer the 'How?' and 'What kind?' In an otherwise remarkable passage, contrasting the two elements of the Proletarian Revolution, political action as the destructive, economic action as the constructive, element, he said: 'Where its organizing activity begins, where its proper aim, its soul, emerges, there Socialism casts away the political hull.' ("On the King of Prussia and Social Reform.")" First of all, 2 other published translations of Marx's article give 'political mask' and 'political cloak' instead of A.P.'s "political hull". A hull can be regarded as 1) the outer layer of a seed, such as a 'shell' or 'casing', or it can be regarded as 2) the essence of an object, like the hull of a ship; so, A.P.'s use of the word 'hull' creates confusion. A.P.'s misuse of 'hull' is also investigated again at the end of Part D of this book. Are we to believe, from A.P.'s little quote, or from anything else he wrote, that 'Marx projected his conception of the non-political, classless future society with greater precision than Engels'? It's too bad that A.P. didn't quote something more convincing, but the reason he didn't was that neither Marx nor Engels had ever tried to define the structure of the future classless and stateless society, and that was a conscious decision on their part, not an oversight, as A.P. implied, since no one can predict what that structure will look like. I trust people will safely make that transition at the proper time, and without any help from Marx, De Leon, or anyone else from now or the past. The form that WAS continually discovered and rediscovered in the days of Marx and Engels was the democratic republic, the Paris Commune being the example that held great promise. A.P. implied all along that a classless, stateless administration of things would be the natural and immediate successor to capitalism, a conclusion that could have been reached only by ignoring the entire body of the mature political writings of Marx and Engels. If the political hull is to be cast away when socialism's organizing activity begins, does that mean that the state is to be abolished in a revolution? That theory would not correlate with the meaning of an earlier passage from the very same "Critical Notes on the Article 'The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian'" (Marx, Early Writings, Vintage Press, 1975, p. 419): ... "the political soul of revolution consists in the tendency of the classes with no political power to put an end to their isolation from the state and from power." ... How 'the classes with no political power' could 'put an end to their isolation from the state and from power' by 'casting away the political hull' is a puzzle that A.P. probably did not wish to discuss. This was a perfect example of A.P. taking a quote out of historical context, this time from one of Marx's earliest efforts. Was the Marxist theory of the state incomplete in July of 1844 when the 'King of Prussia' article was written? In April of 1883, in a letter to Van Patten of the SLP in New York, Engels wrote (MESC, pp. 340-341): "Marx and I, ever since 1845, have held the view that one of the final results of the future proletarian revolution will be the gradual dissolution and ultimate disappearance of that political organization called the state; an organization the main object of which has ever been to secure, by armed force, the economical subjection of the working majority to the wealthy minority. With the disappearance of a wealthy minority the necessity for an armed repressive state-force disappears also. At the same time we have always held that in order to arrive at this and the other, far more important ends of the social revolution of the future, the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organised political force of the state and with this aid stamp out the resistance of the capitalist class and re-organise society. This is stated already in the Communist Manifesto of 1847, end of Chapter II. "The Anarchists reverse the matter. They say, that the proletarian revolution has to begin by abolishing the political organization of the state. But after the victory of the proletariat, the only organization the victorious working class finds ready-made for use is that of the state. It may require adaptation to the new functions. But to destroy that at such a moment, would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious working class can exert its newly conquered power, keep down its capitalist enemies and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a defeat and in a massacre of the working class like that after the Paris Commune. "Does it require my express assertion that Marx opposed these anarchist absurdities from the very first day that they were started in their present form by Bakunin? The whole internal history of the International Working Men's Association is there to prove it. The Anarchists tried to obtain the lead of the International, by the foulest means, ever since 1867 and the chief obstacle in their way was Marx. The result of the five years' struggle was the expulsion, at the Hague Congress, Sept. 1872, of the Anarchists from the International, and the man who did most to procure that expulsion was Marx. Our old friend F. A. Sorge of Hoboken, who was present as a delegate, can give you further particulars if you desire. "Now as to Johann Most. If any man asserts that Most, since he turned anarchist, has had any relations with, or support from Marx, he is either a dupe or a deliberate liar. ... We had for his anarchism and anarchist tactics the same contempt as for those people from whom he had learnt it." The first sentence of that excerpt shows that Marx and Engels agreed on their theory of the dissolution of the state only after 1845, which information could not have been avoided by A.P. during the preparation of his Preface, because, on the bottom of page XIII thereof, that very same letter to Van Patten was again quoted. The 1844 'King of Prussia' article was also misused by A.P. to lead the reader to believe that 'there is a sharp division between proletarian political and economic activities', but with no explanation of the historical context from which Marx's phrases were taken. The case that A.P. was trying to build was that: 'Political power is destructive only, and is useful to abolish the capitalist state, but economic reconstruction begins only when political action ceases.' By themselves, the early phrases of Marx and Engels were incapable of leading the reader to a full understanding of their theories, but the same early phrases were abused by A.P. to facilitate justification of his anarchist theories. This was highly unethical, and was also thoroughly contradicted by the more elaborate writings of Marx and Engels in their refutations of the anarchists, especially around the final years of the First International. A.P. continued (p. XIII):8 "In other words, although both Marx and Engels knew, and said so in general terms, that the political form of society would yield to the industrial form, they did not develop the vital point beyond the general, and, for all practical purposes, left the problem unsolved." Though it's entirely possible that political forms may someday yield to a classless, stateless administration of things in the future, Marx and Engels believed that an entire historical epoch known as the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to rise and fall between the end of capitalism and the start of classless, stateless society. One of the many places where A.P. went wrong was in stating that 'Marx and Engels failed to solve the problem of specifying an industrial form for future society.' The development of such an industrial form must have been such a "vital point" for Engels that he wrote in "The Housing Question" (MESW II, pp. 368-369): "To be utopian does not mean to maintain that the emancipation of humanity from the chains which its historic past has forged will be complete only when the antithesis between town and country has been abolished; the utopia begins only when one ventures, "from existing conditions," to prescribe the form in which this or any other antithesis of present-day society is to be resolved." The SLP's Socialist Industrial Union program fits Engels' definition of utopia perfectly, because it prescribes the form into which the working class must organize in order to resolve the contradiction between social production and private appropriation of the product of labor. Another criticism leveled against utopian forms in "The Housing Question" was that they failed completely to help the proletariat become the ruling class. The stated intent of Engels' German party, on the other hand, was to take full state power and pursue working class policies in the new state against the interests of the bourgeoisie (MESW II, p. 356): "But the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party, just because it is a workers' party, necessarily pursues a "class policy," the policy of the working class. Since each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state, so the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is necessarily striving to establish its rule, the rule of the working class, hence "class domination." Moreover, every real proletarian party, from the English Chartists onward, has put forward a class policy, the organization of the proletariat as an independent political party, as the primary condition of its struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the immediate aim of the struggle." The SIU program rejects political forms for future society altogether by calling for the dismantling of the state as soon as SLP political candidates get elected to office. The SIU recognizes no post-electoral political or state organization of the proletariat, which is completely ahistorical, and unscientific. A.P. continued (p. XIII):9 "But, being anything but anarchists, they were compelled to fall back on the doomed and dying political State as the instrument, not merely of destruction, but of construction as well - a conclusion which, in the Marxian premises, and particularly in the light of Morgan's important discoveries and summary (accepted in the main by Marx and Engels), amounted to a contradiction in terms." After pulling every trick in the book to put anarchist philosophy in the mouths of Marx and Engels, A.P. then reminded us that 'Marx and Engels were anything but anarchists.' According to A.P., 'The anarchists would abolish the state, and replace it with nothing at all', but the anarchists that Marx and Engels fought against wanted to replace the state with organizations of trade unions, or with the First International, or with a non-political administration of things, practically the same as the SIU program. A.P. stated that Marx and Engels were ... 'compelled to fall back on the doomed and dying political State as the instrument, not merely of destruction, but of construction as well' ... A.P. also theorized that 'the political state can only be a capitalist state'. Those two statements enjoy a certain consistency of logic, for it is difficult to imagine the CAPITALIST state being very interested in either socialist construction or the repression of the capitalist class. But, Engels was not so primitive or confused as to expect a state that was designed to protect capitalist interests to carry out tasks that contravene those same interests. It is difficult as well to imagine the alleged contradiction between Morgan's discoveries and Marx's theories. In "Ancient Society", Morgan wrote (New York Labor News, N.Y., 1971, p. 552): "The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes." Exactly how this statement about human intelligence mastering property, or how any other of Morgan's statements contradicted Marx's theories was not explained by A.P. Perhaps the lapse was related to the continuation of the state after the victory of the workers, a state that A.P. always interpreted as a capitalist state, but which Marx and Engels intended to be a workers' state. Since A.P.'s misinterpretation meant that he thought that Marx's scenario would perpetuate capitalist property forever, that may be why he stated that the perspectives of Marx and Morgan were at odds. A little off point, and in no attempt to discredit Morgan, but of interest to those concerned with racial issues, Lewis Henry Morgan also stated on the next page (Ibid., p. 553): "It must be regarded as a marvelous fact that a portion of mankind five thousand years ago, less or more, attained to civilization. In strictness but two families, the Semitic and the Aryan, accomplished the work through unassisted self-development. The Aryan family represents the central stream of human progress, because it produced the highest type of mankind, and because it has proved its intrinsic superiority by gradually assuming control of the earth. And yet, civilization must be regarded as an accident of circumstances" ... Out of Morgan's whole book, that was the only paragraph of its type that I could find. A.P. continued (p. XIII):10 "The reason for the failure of Marx and Engels to project the indicated synthesis lies beyond the subject in hand. But that Engels sensed the deficiency in the analysis of the State, and the necessity for an organ to administer things, is, I believe, subject to demonstration." A.P.'s statement appears to be a cop-out. A.P. could not give a reason for an alleged 'failure ... to project the indicated synthesis', because they did not fail in that particular manner. If Marx and Engels completely, consciously and publicly refused to describe the form of classless, stateless society, then there can be no failure on their part in that area. But, what A.P. avoided discussing was the lesson Marx and Engels took from the Paris Commune experience: M+E expected the political era beyond capitalist rule to be a proletarian dictatorship, and the specific form of that dictatorship would be a democratic republic. With regard to A.P.'s second sentence, and in light of all that has been uncovered about A.P.'s methods employed so far, his statement rather seems like a complaint that Engels did not leave a few handy phrases around that could have been taken out of context and manipulated into a sense of deficiency in what he had written. A.P. continued (p. XIII):11 "The Marxian premise was sound as far as it went, but the premise was incomplete. And, as Buckle reminds us: 'Whenever something is kept back in the premises, something must be wanting in the conclusion.'" Wasn't it just a little ironic for A.P. to have complained about 'Marxian' premises being incomplete? What about all of the premises that are missing from A.P.'s theories? Why didn't his theories include 1) the worker-peasant alliance, and 2) the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie? With those premises missing, how accurate could his conclusions be? Engels wrote in "The Housing Question" (MESW II, p. 314): "If one has so arranged one's premises that they already contain the conclusion, then of course it requires no greater skill than any charlatan possesses to produce the result, prepared beforehand, from the bag and proudly point to unshakeable logic whose result it is." With regard to a conclusion that is severely wanting in logic and suitability to American conditions, was the SIU the marvelous gift from De Leon that the SLP claims it is, or had it already been criticized by Marx as essentially a crazy Bakuninist scheme? In his letter to Lafargue of April 19, 1870, Marx began point #3 with a sarcastic critique of Bakunin's anarchist theories (NW 153, p. 46): "3) The working class must not occupy itself with politics. They must only organize themselves by trades-unions. One fine day, by means of the Internationale they will supplant the place of all existing states. You see what a caricature he {Bakunin} has made of my doctrines! As the transformation of the existing States into Associations is our last end, we must allow the governments, these great Trade-Unions of the ruling classes, to do as they like, because to occupy ourselves with them is to acknowledge them. Why! In the same way the old socialists said: You must not occupy yourselves with the wages question, because you want to abolish wages labour, and to struggle with the capitalist about the rate of wages is to acknowledge the wages system! The ass has not even seen that every class movement, as a class movement, is necessarily and was always a political movement." It appears as though the idea of unions taking the place of the existing states had been proposed by Bakunin as early as the days of the First International Working Men's Association (1864-1872), and Marx had criticized it some 35 years before De Leon gave his alleged stroke of genius to the American anarchists. According to Lozovsky, Bakunin invented anarcho-syndicalism, of which the Socialist Industrial Union idea is but a variation that took into account the vertical monopoly ownership of industries by positing a corresponding industrial union organization of the working class. If Bakunin's idea was a 'mistake', then De Leon's SIU was a monument to that 'mistake', and the SLP is a church in which that 'mistake' has been worshiped for a long time. Because of the European and Russian roots of anarchy, the old idea that had been fed to me in my old study class about the totally American character of the Party program proved to be just another lie. If Bakunin really was the author of the essence of the SIU, then it turns out to be far more European in origin than what the SLP said it was, and, what's worse for Party notions of prestige, the SIU turns out to be Russian. Thus we find, much to the contrary of all of A.P.'s wind about 'conditions', it may have been the backward conditions of Bakunin's Russia that gave birth to anarcho-syndicalism, and to the basic idea behind the Party program. With all of the repressive absolute monarchies of that era, especially around Eastern Europe, an Eastern European origin for anarcho-syndicalism is not surprising. On the other hand, anarcho-syndicalism spontaneously arising in a republic like the USA, or in England of that era, WOULD be surprising, because workers in republics have democratic and peaceful mechanisms to help them, while workers in absolute tyrannies have nothing but their own devices with which to defend themselves against state institutions that rightfully appear useless and hostile. There, workers could easily be attracted to notions of replacing absolute tyrannies with a classless and stateless administration of things. Compare the state of open class warfare associated with feudal monarchies to the rather easy-going life in republics, which enjoy tremendous amounts of mass invovement and participation in government. In a way, it's too bad that the Party took such a low road by alleging a Marxian basis for the SIU. If they had instead simply offered it without trying to justify it in Marxian science, it might have had a better chance of being accepted, for their idea of bypassing political solutions to the social question simply because of advances in the means of production may have had a certain appeal that might never have required a poorly engineered justification in Marxism. A.P. continued (p. XIII):12 "Criticizing the anarchists for wishing to destroy the State out of hand, with nothing to take its place, Engels (in a letter written in 1883) said: "'The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the State. But after its victory the sole organization which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the State.' ("Marx-Engels Correspondence.") "Precisely. Without the concept of Industrial Unions, and the Industrial Union form of government, the State appeared to be the only social organization capable of holding society together and to carry on, somehow, social production, until that undefined, nebulous 'administration of things' could be organized. By attributing that quote to as vast a body of work as the 'Marx-Engels Correspondence', A.P. thereby refused to admit that it came from the same 1883 letter to Van Patten that he had already extensively quoted. A.P. falsely portrayed it as indicating that 'Engels thought that the capitalist state would survive the political victory of the workers' party.' Political victory, yes, but what kind of political victory? Let's consider three different kinds, from the most ordinary to the most empowering: At the low end, consider winning reforms in democracies, such as reducing the length of the working day, or winning the right to unionize, or the right to free and universal health care, etc. Second, consider a workers' party winning an electoral victory at the ballot box, such as what occurred in the past century of European politics. Third, consider the proletariat taking full state power, as in the Paris Commune, the early Soviets, Mao in China, Castro in Cuba, etc. During working class electoral victories, the state that survives the election is indeed the capitalist state, as proven by European politics, which didn't provide enough force to enable property ownership to be socialized without compensation. But, electorally victorious Europeans were able to win reforms that put them ahead of the USA, at least in terms of health care and vacation time. Without a very careful examination of Engels' letter to Van Patten, the intent of his second paragraph could be subjected to a variety of interpretations, especially if one were to take every sentence as Marxist gospel, as A.P. chose to do. A.P. opportunistically allowed one sentence: 'But after its victory the sole organization which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the State' to convey the anarchist theory that: 'The state that survives the political victory of the proletariat {in the electoral sense} is the capitalist state, or the state as such, an entity of no value to the proletariat, and which is to be abolished.' However, the absurdity of this misinterpretation was made evident by another passage in the very same letter (MESC, p. 341): "At the same time we have always held that in order to arrive at this and the other, far more important ends of the social revolution of the future, the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organized political force of the state and with this aid stamp out the resistance of the capitalist class and reorganize society." How the proletariat would "stamp out the resistance of the capitalist class" with capitalist state machinery is beyond my ability to comprehend, and yet A.P. attributed the formulation of that very absurdity to Engels, in spite of the writings of Marx and Engels on the palpable experience of the Paris Commune, with its replacement of the old state machinery with a workers' state, proving that the anarchists either learned nothing from history (this is too charitable a conclusion), or else they willfully studied history in order to teach other than what really happened. In other words, they studied history in order to be better able to butcher it. What with the myriad connections of anarchists to the police, the uncharitable conclusion is probably the more accurate. Electoral victories were the only type of political victories A.P. allowed us to consider, and he prevented his readers from contemplating the possibility of the ultimate type of political victory, i.e., taking full state power. In A.P.'s pamphlet analyzed in Part 4 of this book, two of the three types of political victories were eliminated as options for an 'anarchist political party'. Limited viewpoints run throughout anarchist philosophy, i.e., they limit the options for militant action to an insufficient few, or they set up straw-man options that the lower classes would never consider adopting en masse. For the third time already, A.P. falsely charged that the anarchists would destroy the state out of hand, with nothing to take its place, as though no one would ever again read about the perfect willingness of anarchists to replace the state with an administration of things, much the same way Bakunin and his brainchild SIU program would like to do. But, what if there was something that the anarchists wanted to destroy out of hand, but nothing to take its place existed, and the name of that 'irreplaceable something' was 'capitalism'? There often was a glimmer of plausibility lurking somewhere in what A.P. wrote. A.P. continued (p. XIV):13 "Had Engels lived another ten or twenty years, and particularly if he had lived to witness the logical development of the State administration idea (however expectantly temporary) into the ultra-reactionary fascist State machinery, he would undoubtedly have realized the deficiency in his analysis and projection of the post-revolutionary requirements and possibilities." Though falling an inch or two short of directly attributing fascism's paternity rights to Engels, A.P. once again accused Engels of not knowing the difference between socialism and state capitalism, but, in a long footnote in the plain text of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", i.e., even on pages 56-7 of the SLP edition of the pamphlet, Engels differentiated between socialism and state capitalism in greater than sufficient detail (MESW III, p. 145): "But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies or trusts, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution." In order to believe that Engels did not know the difference between state capitalism and socialism, one would have to shut one's eyes completely to passages like that, and to many others elsewhere as well. A careful reader of even the SLP version of Engels' pamphlet would not have to go to the library to figure out that A.P. had misrepresented Engels. Germany would be a logical choice for an example of a state capitalism which evolved into an ultra-reactionary state machine. From the context of A.P.'s criticisms of Engels' alleged state capitalism, A.P. was not above suggesting that 'Engels was the unwitting father of fascism.' What with the alleged dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry that Marx and Engels allegedly promoted, and that Stalin carried out to an extreme, it isn't very difficult to imagine that A.P. would blame both fascism and Stalinism on Marx and Engels for their 'crime' of advocating political solutions, as if politics could be avoided during the present era of class divisions, if enough minds are put to the task. With regard to the 'however expectantly temporary' nature of Engels' state administration idea, A.P. here conceded that the use of the state by the workers was to be a temporary measure in Marxist theory, so, it shouldn't be a total surprise if the temporary use of the state by the workers had been honored by the founders of socialism with an official name, but A.P. dismissed it as 'a period of little consequence', instead of admitting that the name of this temporary period was to be nothing less than the dictatorship of the proletariat. As for the quality of the translation, the text of the SLP pamphlet and that of the Progress Publishers version agree practically exactly, with the major exception that the SLP editions quite consistently capitalized the term 'State' most of the time, undoubtedly to lend an exclusive and capitalist coloring to 'the state', thereby building mass hostility to it. In the above passage, the Progress Publishers edition also printed "capitalistic nature of the productive forces" instead of "capitalist nature". But, in this pamphlet, these differences in translations were not so gross as to cause concern, unlike the way in which 'differences in translations' in other pamphlets grossly affected the intent of what Marx, Engels and Lenin had written. A.P. continued (p. XIV):14 "Lenin did realize the deficiency, for in October, 1917, discussing the problem confronting the workers of Russia when political power fell into their hands, he wrote that "there is no doubt that with the old State machine the proletariat could not have retained power, and to create a new power all of a sudden is impossible!' (Lenin: "Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?")" While A.P. gave the title of Lenin's booklet as "Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?", the title in the Collected Works just happens to read "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?". Though some apologists for A.P. might explain that 'the difference between titles was just another difference in translations', omitting the word 'State' is really too large a difference to be anything but another example of a deliberate anarchist retreat from Lenin's 'State Power', a retreat caused by A.P.'s dread of the notion of 'political power' being scrutinized or considered by the lower classes, driving A.P. wherever possible to omit material that hinted at that option. Doesn't the phrase 'when political power fell into their hands' sound just a little too passive to be based in reality? Did A.P. have in mind a European election, or a plain old election in the USA, where power alternately 'falls into the hands' of Republicans and Democrats? In a country like Russia, one that has not had a long tradition of regular democratic elections, political power has often been gained or maintained by nothing less than force, and the change in power from the hands of one class to another hardly ever meant anything less than a fight. To suggest that 'power fell into the hands of the Russian proletariat' could indicate that A.P. was portraying Lenin's Bolshevik Party as just another party competing with other parties for power in a democracy, and as though political conditions under the Russian monarchy were not much different from American democratic conditions. The contrast between the allegedly similar political conditions of America and Russia, and their allegedly diametrically opposed economic conditions, was an interesting turnabout. Too bad for A.P. that the opposite was far closer to the truth. From a political perspective, the American republic was diametrically opposed to the old Russian monarchy, democracy being the negation of monarchy, while, at the same time in history, the economic systems of both America and Russia were similar in that they were both capitalist. A.P.'s reversal persuaded readers to think that 'political solutions were appropriate for the primitive economic conditions of Russia, while economic solutions are appropriate to the super-advanced economic conditions of America.' Notice the compatibility of that lie with the alleged necessity of a proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry in backward countries with relatively large peasant populations. True to form, A.P. lifted that quote from Lenin entirely out of context. In "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", written a few weeks before the Bolshevik revolution, Lenin explained that the soviets were organizations that would help the proletariat take full state power (LCW 26, p. 104): "In 1905, our Soviets existed only in embryo, so to speak, as they lived altogether only a few weeks. Clearly, under the conditions of that time, their comprehensive development was out of the question. It is still out of the question in the 1917 Revolution, for a few months is an extremely short period and - this is most important - the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leaders have prostituted the Soviets, have reduced their role to that of a talking-shop, of an accomplice in the compromising policy of the leaders. The Soviets have been rotting and decaying alive under the leadership of the Liebers, Dans, Tseretelis and Chernovs. The Soviets will be able to develop properly, to display their potentialities and capabilities to the full only by taking full state power; for otherwise they have nothing to do, otherwise they are either simply embryos (and to remain an embryo too long is fatal), or playthings. "Dual power" means paralysis for the Soviets. "If the creative enthusiasm of the revolutionary classes had not given rise to the Soviets, the proletarian revolution in Russia would have been a hopeless cause, for the proletariat could certainly not retain power with the old state apparatus, and it is impossible to create a new apparatus immediately. The sad history of the prostitution of the Soviets by the Tseretelis and Chernovs, the history of the "coalition", is also the history of the liberation of the Soviets from petty-bourgeois illusions, of their passage through the "purgatory" of the practical experience of the utter abomination and filth of all and sundry bourgeois coalitions. Let us hope that this "purgatory" has steeled rather than weakened the Soviets." Obviously, Lenin was not at all discussing, or even alluding to, 'a deficiency in the Marxist theory of the state', nor was it 'Lenin's lament over power having fallen into the hands of the workers'. Rather, it was a celebration of the fact that the soviets had already been organized, and needed only to be turned to a revolutionary purpose under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, rather than over to the allegedly petty-bourgeois leadership of the Mensheviks and other parties that might never have been able to lead the workers to completely defeat the old regime. The exposure of A.P. having so brazenly taken Lenin's phrase completely out of context has again left us with no concrete evidence of a sense of deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state by Marx, Engels or Lenin, but comprises additional clear evidence with which to convict A.P. of gross fraud. A.P. continued (p. XIV):15 "This is the point De Leon incessantly hammered home - the workers must organize the agency needed to administer production, a new government machine is needed to supplant the old State machine. We cannot doubt that Frederick Engels would have seen this as clearly as Lenin did, and probably more so." After bombarding his readers with little better than lies, and as though SLP members would lap them all up like obedient servants, A.P. proceeded to suggest that he had such a familiarity with their inner thoughts that 'Engels probably would have seen the need for an organization to administer production' 'as clearly as Lenin did'! From all of the nonsense that he fabricated out of quotes out of context, A.P. concluded that 'workers must replace the capitalist state with an administration of things', as though 'administering production was to be the most important post-revolutionary function'. A.P. entirely ignored the possibility that the capitalist class would fight to retain its ownership of industry and its political advantages. A.P. continued (p. XIV):16 "Indeed, he does anticipate that the State, in the role he assigns to it (illogical and impossible as we now clearly see), 'might require very considerable alterations before it can fulfill its new functions.' ("Socialism From Utopia to Science")" Though this phrase was attributed to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", it can only be found in Engels' letter to Van Patten. Under the circumstances of an honest scholar attempting an exploration of a deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state, a failure to credit excerpts correctly might be forgiven like typographical errors; but, in the present circumstances, where practically every sentence of A.P.'s contains one or more lies, it's easy to think of a reason why he wouldn't want too much material attributed to the Van Patten letter. Having used it so often, it would have been logical for a scholar to have included the whole letter in an appendix, had it not contained so much contradictory evidence to so many of A.P.'s arguments and assertions. Did Engels really suggest that the capitalist state, or 'the state as such', 'may require adaptation to the new functions', i.e., the administration of production and the repression of the capitalists? In his introduction to "The Civil War in France", written for the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels got quite specific about altering the state machine (MESW II, pp. 187-189): "From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labor. But these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society. This can be seen, for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally so in the democratic republic. Nowhere do "politicians" form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America. There, each of the two major parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions. It is well known how the Americans have been trying for thirty years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and how in spite of it all they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends - and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it. "Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society - an inevitable transformation in all previous states - the Commune made use of two infallible means. In the first place, it filled all posts - administrative, judicial and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors and, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by the workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were added besides. "This shattering [Sprengung] of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one is described in detail in the third section of The Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more on some of its features, because in Germany particularly the superstitious belief in the state has been carried over from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers. According to the philosophical conception, the state is the "realisation of the idea," or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realised. And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes root the more readily since people are accustomed from childhood to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its lucratively positioned officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap. "Of late, the Social-Democratic Philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Engels well answered the question of 'altering' or 'adapting' the state in his reference to the state as: ... "an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible" ... The lack of substantive change after the transition from Republican to Democratic administrations in American elections can be contrasted to the depth of change that the administration of Paris experienced at the time of the Commune. Some aspects of Engels' critique of the American two-party system are still relevant now. He also made it clear that the pre-revolutionary and the post-revolutionary states are two entirely different animals. While the role of the post-revolutionary state was alleged by A.P. to be that of merely administering production, its primary role in Marxist theory is to keep down the workers' class enemies. If the capitalist state could administer production, then why couldn't the proletarian state? By now, we have seen how badly the existing communist states have failed in that function so far, and by labeling the post-revolutionary administration of production by the state as 'illogical and impossible', this may be yet another place where the Party concluded correctly for all of the wrong reasons. A.P. continued (pp. XIV-XV):17 "But that a new organ of social administration and production is essential, he leaves open to no doubt. For he goes on to say that to destroy the State at the moment of proletarian political victory 'would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society WITHOUT WHICH THE WHOLE VICTORY MUST END IN A NEW DEFEAT AND IN A MASS SLAUGHTER OF THE WORKERS SIMILAR TO THOSE AFTER THE PARIS COMMUNE.' (Ibid.)" A.P.'s two sentences contradicted one another. A.P. first wrote that Engels left 'open to no doubt' that 'a new organ of social administration and production is essential.' If so, then the very next sentence might want to confirm the 'new organ' thesis in A.P.'s first sentence, but A.P. merely went on to quote the Van Patten letter to the effect that 'the working class agenda was going to be accomplished with the old state machine'! Nothing in A.P.'s second sentence implied or indicated that 'Engels saw the need for a new organ' at all! This was all we got from A.P., in spite of the fact that Engels praised the Commune as an example of a new state machine, in fact a proletarian dictatorship. Though A.P.'s "Ibid." implied that the quote was taken from "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", it could only be found in the Van Patten letter. This was the last of three times that A.P. quoted that letter, but he barely credited it once. By fragmenting the letter and attributing the fragments to different sources, the internal logic of the letter was broken up, and it could not readily testify against the points made by A.P. in his Preface to the effect that: 1) 'the anarchists wanted to abolish the capitalist state with nothing to replace it', 2) 'the capitalist state shouldn't be abolished unless something exists to replace it', 3) 'the capitalist state is needed by the victorious proletariat to assert its newly conquered power', 4) 'the capitalist state is needed by the victorious proletariat to hold down its capitalist adversaries', and 5) 'the capitalist state is needed by the victorious proletariat to carry out an economic revolution WITHOUT WHICH THE WHOLE VICTORY MUST END IN A NEW DEFEAT AND IN A MASS SLAUGHTER OF THE WORKERS SIMILAR TO THOSE AFTER THE PARIS COMMUNE.' ... If the founders of socialism had actually formulated and believed in the five absurdities enumerated above, one could quite easily get the impression that: 'People in the last century had quite primitive brains and intellects, but we have come so much further today.' And, if we could guess why we have come so far along, 'it was entirely due to the advances in the means of production.' I wonder how many members understood and agreed with A.P.'s 'analysis', and how many might have speculated that it would have explained a lot to Marx and Engels if only it had been available to them while they were alive. How many members wished that they could have stepped into a time machine to go back to the last century to deliver that analysis to Marx and Engels themselves? The one sentence from the excerpt of A.P.'s text that was not a miserable lie was the first sentence, for Marx and Engels certainly did believe that a new organization of the poor and oppressed was essential, though not entirely for the purpose of administering production. It is difficult to imagine how Engels, on the one hand, could have intended that (MESC, p. 341): ... 'after the victory of the proletariat, the only organization the victorious working class finds ready-made for use is that of the capitalist state.' ... while, on the other hand, in his 'Twentieth Anniversary Introduction to The Civil War in France', Engels had written that (MESW II, p. 187): ... "the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself" ... There Engels stated in his own words what Marx had observed in "The Civil War in France", namely that (MESW II, p. 217): ... 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.' Does this not contradict the anarchist absurdity that 'the proletariat finds the capitalist state ready-made for use after its victory'? But, if the victory in question happens to be an electoral victory in a democratic republic, then that form of state is ready-made for the proletariat to use. The state and the form of the state are two different things. In a January 1884 letter to Bernstein, Engels elaborated further on the idea of adapting the old state to new functions (MESC, p. 345): "It is simply a question of showing that the victorious proletariat must first refashion the old bureaucratic, administratively centralised state power before it can use it for its own purposes; whereas all bourgeois republicans since 1848 inveighed against this machinery so long as they were in the opposition, but once they were in the government they took it over without altering it and used it partly against the reaction but still more against the proletariat." These last statements can only mean that the bourgeoisie used the state machine that it inherited from the feudal regimes unmodified for its own purposes, whereas the lower classes cannot directly use or wield the unmodified old ruling class state machine for socialist purposes. One fact that seems not to have been freely advertised was the connection between Engels and various SLP personalities. Philip Van Patten was a National Secretary of the SLP from 1877-83, a period of time when the SLP stood on a Marxist platform, as Engels claimed in his letter to Sorge of 3-10-1887 (LTA, p. 178): ... "it is the sole workers' organization in America wholly standing on our platform." The SLP might have had a Marxist platform in 1887, but it certainly changed after 1889. Some of the history of the SLP's conversion to anarchist ideology is presented in Appendix 2.Recap of Falsifications, Misrepresentations, and Omissions From the above analysis of A.P.'s Preface to Engels' "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", the following synopsis of inaccuracies has been compiled:Point #:1 Quotes from Engels were selected so as to exclude any material describing the era of proletarian dictatorship.2 Engels was accused of advocating state capitalism because of allegedly not knowing the difference between socialism and state capitalism, in spite of evidence to the contrary in the very text of his pamphlet.3 A.P.'s 'matter of course transformation into Socialism' theory contradicted his 1931 'three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success' theory, as advanced in "PD vs. D+D". It was implied that more modern theories held that 'socialism' would not result from the 'matter of course transformation.'4 The Marxist concept of the working class political victory was limited to an electoral victory at the ballot box. 'The concentration of property into the hands of the workers' state' was misstated by De Leon as 'the concentration of property into the hands of the capitalist state', and De Leon's 'genius' was credited for that lie.5 By precluding the existence of the political state, De Leon's Industrial Union program fitted the program of anarchy, but it was not labeled as such. The political state, or dictatorship of the proletariat, was incorrectly declared to cease to exist under 'socialism'. Marx and Engels were alleged to have shown that 'the state as such (the capitalist state) will die out', instead of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat will wither away'.6 Engels was faulted for not specifying the form to be taken by the classless, stateless administration of things. The democratic republic form of state was ignored as the form that Marx and Engels saw the workers use in the Paris Commune. By carefully juxtaposing Engels' phrases, the "systematic, definite organization of production" was implied to be consistent only with classless, stateless society, instead of consistent with both lower and upper stages of post-revolutionary society.7 Marx was faulted for failing to specify the form of the future structure of society. A more precise conception of classless, stateless society than that of Engels was allegedly projected by Marx, but with little documentation other than a sentence from 1844 given to back up the assertion. That single sentence quoted from an early work of Marx was taken out of historical - as well as actual - context to buttress the theory that 'political action is destructive only, while economic action is constructive, but will not begin until political action is finished.' That early quote from Marx was used to imply that 'classless, stateless society will emerge from capitalism right after the revolution.' Evidence that the Marxist theory of the state might have been incomplete in 1844 was totally ignored, even though the evidence of that possibility could not have been avoided.8 Marx and Engels were faulted for 'not developing the vital point of the yielding of the political form to the industrial form', even though they had repeatedly criticized speculation about forms of classless, stateless society as utopian. The ample number of examples in the writings of Marx and Engels to the effect that 'the democratic republic was to be the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat' were entirely ignored.9 The anarchists were again accused of wishing to destroy the state, while offering nothing with which to replace it. The 'doomed and dying political state' was implied to be either the capitalist state or an entity that stood above classes. A 'constructive and destructive capitalist state' theory was improperly substituted for Marx's 'constructive and destructive proletarian state', and it was then shown that the falsified 'Marxist' theory of the state contradicted itself. How Morgan illuminated 'the contradictory nature of Marx's theory of a constructive and destructive political state' was left for the reader only to imagine.10 Marx and Engels were improperly criticized for an alleged 'failure to project the indicated synthesis', or otherwise resolve contradictions arising from their alleged advocacy of proletarian use of the 'capitalist' political state. A reason for the alleged failure of Marx and Engels to 'project the indicated synthesis' was implied to exist, but was not specified. A.P. hinted that Engels might have sensed a deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state, and 'the necessity for an organ to administer things', but did not document it. A.P. failed to show that Engels believed that production could be administered by a workers' state.11 An anarchist premise was incorrectly labeled as a 'Marxian' premise, and, with a little help from a quote by Buckle, the premise was declared to be 'incomplete'.12 Engels was alleged to have 'criticized the anarchists for wishing to destroy the State out of hand, with nothing to take its place', but no example of that type of criticism was ever offered as proof. The Van Patten letter was not credited, in spite of its having been quoted elsewhere. A portion of the Van Patten letter was quoted out of context to enable the post-revolutionary state appear to be capitalist in content, in spite of the many writings by Marx and Engels that showed the post-revolutionary state was to be proletarian in content. The capitalist state was alleged to survive the proletarian revolution, and was falsely given a role in the management of post-revolutionary society. The Industrial Union form of government was presented as the form of administration of things that would solve the problems associated with the Marxist scenario of administering production with a post-revolutionary capitalist state. The democratic republic form of proletarian dictatorship was never mentioned.13 Engels was accused of not knowing the difference between socialism and state capitalism, and of not having lived to see the realization of the state capitalism idea, in spite of documentation to the contrary in the very same pamphlet for which A.P. wrote his Preface. On faulty grounds, the Marxist theory of the state was alleged to be deficient. The post-revolutionary state was alleged to be a capitalist state. The democratic republic was omitted from Engels' alleged projection of 'post-revolutionary requirements and possibilities'.14 On the basis of a quote out of context, Lenin was alleged to have been aware of a 'deficiency' in the Marxist analysis of the state. Political power was misrepresented as having merely fallen into the hands of the workers, rather than having been fought for.15 The building of an economic agency to administer production was falsely put at the top of the list of priorities for the working class, as though economic administration was to be the only function of the post-revolutionary state. Lenin was misrepresented as having seen the need for an agency of economic administration to assume the post-revolutionary functions of the workers' state, but with no documentation. On the basis of lies and quotes out of context, it was falsely claimed that 'Engels would have seen the need for such a post-revolutionary economic administrative agency as clearly as Lenin did, and probably more so.'16 Engels' quote from the Van Patten letter was falsely attributed to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science". The capitalist state, or 'the state as such' was substituted for the proletarian state in A.P.'s analysis of post-revolutionary roles for the state. Contempt for the post-revolutionary role of administering production was expressed for the state, such as 'illogical and impossible'.17 In his first sentence, A.P. stated that Engels advocated a new organ for social and productive administration, though, in his next sentence, this advocacy was contradicted by misusing quotes from the Van Patten letter to imply that 'all of the social changes under socialism would take place using the old state machine.' A.P. failed to make any distinction between the state and the form of state, enabling him to assert that 'Marx and Engels taught that the proletariat would carry out the revolution with the old state machine', rather than stating that 'the democratic republic would be as much the form of state for the proletariat as it is for the bourgeoisie.' The old capitalist state, or 'the state as such' was designated as the vehicle by which the proletariat would 1) 'assert its newly conquered power', 2) 'hold down its capitalist adversaries', 3) 'carry out that economic revolution of society 'WITHOUT WHICH ..' etc.' Engels' quote from the Van Patten letter was again falsely attributed to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science". In a little over four pages of his Preface, from page XI to XV, Arnold Petersen told 48 lies, and maybe more.----------The SLP Theories of the State According to A.P.'s butchery of Marxist theory, the theories of the state would have been explained by the indicated authors in the following ways:'By Marx and Engels' 'The proletariat does not create its own State power, but uses the capitalist State in order to administer production after the revolution. Private property is gradually converted into capitalist State property. When the capitalist State represents the whole of society, it dies out. 'The Anarchists wanted to abolish the State out of hand with nothing to take its place, but that would have been foolish, since the capitalist state is the only post-political victory organization still in existence that the proletariat can use to administer production. 'After the victory of the proletariat, it may be necessary to alter the capitalist State to get it to conform to its new task of socialist reconstruction.''By Daniel De Leon' 'Because the continued use of the capitalist State beyond the political victory means certain failure for the proletarian revolution, the workers must organize into Industrial Unions so that the capitalist State can be immediately disposed of. 'Though they knew that the workers cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for their own purposes, Marx and Engels were forced to rely on the capitalist State to perform the tasks of socialist reconstruction and to administer production, because conditions had not yet evolved sufficiently to show them the form of the new administration of things.''By Lenin' 'De Leon did the proletarian movement a great service by discovering at last the new form of the administration of things. Socialist Industrial Unionism is what we are building in the Soviet Union. By correcting the deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the State, De Leon was the only one to add anything to Marxian Science.'What to Think? The preceding theories of the state were distilled from SLP falsifications and anarchist absurdities, which were supported by quotes out of context and lies cut from whole cloth. Anyone with a little curiosity could quite easily verify for themselves that when the proletariat seized state power in the Paris Commune, they created their own state power. Engels declared that the Paris Commune was the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it was a dictatorship over the old ruling classes, and not over the peasantry; and the form of that proletarian government was a democratic republic.----------The Real Theories of the State The following theories of the state were distilled from the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin:Marx and Engels The working class builds a party of its own, independent of bourgeois influence. The working class party allies itself with other progressive forces, and comes to power in the form of a democratic republic. The proletarian dictatorship is the state that dies out as class contradictions are abolished, and after the antitheses between town and country and between mental and manual labor have been abolished. In the American republic of the 1800's, a proletarian victory would have been as simple as getting a majority of workers' party representatives elected to office. But, prosperous economic conditions and opportunities to expand to the West prevented wide-spread working class militancy, and prevented organization of an effective workers' party to vie for state power. The First International Workingmen's Association urged European workers to ally with democratic forces to replace monarchies with democracies by any means necessary. In either type of change, electoral or revolutionary, only by first of all organizing into a distinct and independent political party and by conquering political power could labor be organized along new lines. This scenario had little appeal to anarchists, who wanted workers to spurn political activity and organize themselves into unions which would displace existing states.Lenin Lenin was generally in agreement with Marx and Engels on theories of the state. One exception is covered later. In his April 1917 "Letters on Tactics", Lenin wrote, (LCW 24, p. 49): ..."[A]narchism denies the need for a state and state power in the period of transition from the rule of the bourgeoisie to the rule of the proletariat, whereas I, with a precision that precludes any possibility of misinterpretation, advocate the need for a state in this period, although, in accordance with Marx and the lessons of the Paris Commune, I advocate not the usual parliamentary bourgeois state, but a state without a standing army, without a police opposed to the people, without an officialdom placed above the people." From Lenin's 1918 "The Immediate tasks of the Soviet Government" (NW153, p. 289, or LCW 27, p. 263): ... "it would be extremely stupid and absurdly utopian to assume that the transition from capitalism to socialism is possible without coercion and without dictatorship. Marx's theory very definitely opposed this petty-bourgeois-democratic and anarchist absurdity long ago."A Caricature of Marxist Philosophy In his Preface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", A.P. 'confused and confounded' his readers by quoting Marx, Engels and Lenin out of context to try to prove that 'every kind of state power can only be capitalist state power.' This grand fraud, were it actually a true appraisal, very much limits revolutionary possibilities. 'If State power always and exclusively is bourgeois state power, it is worthless to try to wield that which will always be used against the proletariat. If Marx said that the proletariat cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for their own purposes, and if anarchists want to abolish the state and replace it with nothing at all, then there arises the problem of finding a form of organization with which to administer production after the revolution.' 'Hence Marx's reliance on the capitalist state on a temporary basis, but if the contradiction was too difficult for Marx to solve, how can any mere mortal be expected to come up with a valid solution? Here was an obvious deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state. Even Engels may have suspected a deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state, although Arnold Petersen did not have the time to find perfectly convincing documentation for that sentiment. But, Lenin certainly realized that this deficiency did exist.' 'To save the present generation from becoming too depressed over the lack of options for revolution, it was the genius of Daniel De Leon that came up with the form into which the workers should organize to implement the administration of things so that the capitalist state can be immediately disposed of. Thanks to De Leon and the advances in the means of production which made such ideas possible, the state can be abolished and the socialist administration of things that Marx and Engels could only dream about in their day can become an immediate reality.' The previous paragraphs echo the ideology of the Socialist Labor Party in a condensed form, much of which is taught by members and sympathizers as socialist gospel. Those for whom the caricature serves essential purposes will want to continue to perpetrate it. Opportunists who join with the objective of climbing high in the Party will thoroughly learn the nuances of the caricature, and participate in the task of getting members and sympathizers to part with their dollars to support the hierarchy. They might become familiar with the documentation of lies, dirty tricks and self-serving actions of previous administrations, and continue to hide the evidence of shameful crimes against the members and the workers. In their haughtiness, they could say that 'the emancipation of the membership is the class-conscious act of the membership itself!' Purposely kept in a state of ignorance, members hate to be reminded of their alleged laziness, and though they sometimes complain, they send in ever more money to the National Office, hoping never to hear words of chastisement again, but the prodding gets repeated over and over again, lest members forget their duties to the god-like intellectuals without whom the Party would cease to exist.Anarchist World Outlook The SLP's application of the term "Stalinist bureaucracies" or "bureaucratic state despotisms" to revolutionary governments or aspiring revolutionary movements all over the world emanated from the SLP's denial of the theoretical existence of proletarian state power. Previously oppressed classes that became politically dominant, overturned colonial rule, and came to power in new states of their own, with working-class ideology, were automatically perceived, simply because they were states, as 'exploiting' or 'capitalist' states, and could therefore not be supported in any way. The conflict in Vietnam was not seen as a struggle for self-determination, but rather as the struggle of one group of exploiters against other exploiters seeking domination over poor people with little say in their own fate. The Party subscribed to a three-way imperialist struggle theory in which 'American imperialists, if defeated, would only be traded off for Soviet or Chinese imperialists, and the Vietnamese would go on being exploited as if nothing had happened. If the Vietnamese Communists were to take state power, then they intended to wield their capitalist state for their own purposes, undoubtedly to the detriment of Vietnamese workers. So why should the struggle of Vietnamese communists against Americans be supported in any way whatsoever? Any communist victory over Americans along with their Vietnamese puppets would be null and void due to their intent to wield their capitalist state against the proletariat.' Furthermore, as far as the SLP could determine, the communists were not building Socialist Industrial Unions, and showed no intention of abolishing their state after victory. The SLP regarded all of the other parties on the left as revisionist and opportunist because they saw the need for a party to rule in a state. As a consequence of the SLP's perspective on the state, the great majority of other parties were treated as though they were as much an enemy of workers as any capitalist state, so the SLP could not cooperate to demonstrate or to otherwise help put an end to America's savage war in Vietnam. Though members were never allowed to participate directly in demonstrations against the war that were organized by other groups, the existence of sizable demonstrations convinced the SLP to allow its members to leaflet on the fringes, but never to allow their leafletting and agitational activities to be interpreted as being in support of the protest or the protesters. To maintain its purity, the SLP could do and say little about the unjust war in Vietnam. Members could not join with other progressive forces in the USA to protest the gross injustice, slaughter and destruction of the planet and its peoples without feeling dirty, compromised and aligned with alleged Stalinists. But, amazingly enough, the decree from A.P.'s successors in 1975 was that the three-way imperialist conflict theory was a mistake! The intellectuals wished to attract new blood to the Party, and because so many new prospects probably also shared the gut feeling that the Vietnamese victory was to be celebrated, the intellectuals did not want the Party to maintain such a ridiculous line that new blood would be so alienated by the old position as to refuse to have anything to do with the Party. So, the new verdict was that the final outcome of the Vietnamese conflict was the national liberation of Vietnam, and the liberation was progressive. But, because the ongoing financial support of the NO by the longtime members was definitely a matter of interest to the intellectuals (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush), they did not want to overly antagonize those who were comfortable with the old position, so they found a way to prevent the total alienation of the old blood by claiming that: 'There were other dimensions to the Vietnamese conflict, including the opposing interests of the superpowers, a not insignificant factor.' Even though the new position was officially adopted by the Party, many long-time members could not understand why the old line was incorrect, which they ended up repeating out of habit, much to the consternation of the intellectuals. But, for being afraid to get to the root of the misunderstanding in the first place, much of the fault for the misunderstandings of the long-time members lay with the intellectuals themselves. They could have initiated the process of throwing out the rubbish entirely if they had dared. Because SLP ideology relies heavily on the notion that the existence of the state (which state?) can only mean the existence of slavery* (of which class?), the newly adopted position on the Vietnamese situation had to accommodate itself to that 'state = slavery' equation. The only type of scenario which the SLP could understand, and into which the Vietnamese victory could plausibly fit, was a bourgeois-democratic type of revolutionary state, where a capitalist class overthrows a feudal monarchy and establishes a bourgeois-democratic republic, much like the bourgeois democracies that were established in Europe over the past few hundred years. But, if what happened in Vietnam was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, then why didn't the victorious Vietnamese bourgeoisie stay in Vietnam? If there hadn't been so many pictures of boat people emigrating with their cargoes of gold, the bourgeois-democratic thesis might have had some credibility, but the image of the capitalist class leaving Vietnam in 1975 could only indicate that something other than a traditional bourgeois-democratic revolution had occurred. *In his 1844 article entitled "Critical Notes on the Article 'The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Russian'", Marx wrote (Marx, Early Writings, Vintage Press, 1975, p. 419): "The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery." The Party failed to credit this phrase from one of Marx's earliest works, a few of whose theoretical constructions before 1845 could be considered to be immature. Another indication that it was not a bourgeois-democratic revolution was that the Vietnamese immigrants were accepted into the USA with open arms, just as many of the immigrants from Cuba, the Soviet Union and every other communist country were welcomed. The welcoming of immigrants from communist countries was in direct opposition to the policy of exclusion and expulsion which greeted refugees from the oppressed classes of El Salvador, Haiti, and other dictatorships supported by the American government. The SLP world outlook is based upon the denial of proletarian state power, as well as the denial of alliances between fractions of the lower classes, and these denials have been shown to be based upon falsifications of Marx's theories of the state, and upon ignorance of Marx's policies of workers' support of national liberation struggles.Anarchy and the Party As anarchist as the SLP has been, but having called itself socialist all along, its leadership long ago discerned the necessity to 'prove' that 'it is indeed socialist' in order to satisfy the needs of the membership to feel as though they were supporting a genuine Marxist program. One way to put on a socialist front was to reproduce the writings of the founders of socialism, and then proudly portray them as the Party's own ideas. When pressed to explain exactly how the Party program was based upon Marxism, they cited as much corroborating material as they could possibly squeeze out of context, and then used the phony quotes to support the Party's theories. If a party would like to prove that the proletariat cannot exercise a working class policy in its own state, then proof must be found in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. But, the number of passages one can draw upon to 'prove' this are very few in number, so a falsifier must be very imaginative. Assuming that their readers would never bother to check the 'proof', appropriate passages could be appropriated, and an impression created in the minds of the members that: 1) 'In the old days, the only tool the proletariat had to keep down its capitalist enemies after the revolution was the capitalist state', 2) 'if all property is transformed into state property, it is transformed into capitalist state property', 3) 'the consequence of the proletariat's failure to organize the new administration of things after its political victory will be to face the wrath of the capitalist state.' Working with theories like that, reluctance to take state power is the natural result. It would have been one thing for Party theoreticians to give a fair representation of the Marxist theory of the state before criticizing its deficiencies, but instead, they first falsified Marxist theories, and then found deficiencies in the falsified theories. Then they proposed the SIU solution to 'correct' the artificially phonied deficiencies. Until the SLP casts off its anarchist program and the lies that support it, and learns what it can from the actual experience of the working classes of the world to build a valid program, its program will be of no value to the lower classes. Only the present members can correct the course of the Party from within. As Engels wrote to Eduard Bernstein on October 20, 1882, in the context of criticizing old Bakuninist tactics of lies, calumniation and secret cliquishness (MESC, p. 332): ... "It seems that every worker's party of a big country can develop only through internal struggle, which accords with the laws of dialectical development in general." ... In an October 1882 letter to Bebel, Engels reiterated that idea, and added (MESC, p. 334): ... "The development of the proletariat proceeds everywhere through internal struggles, and France, which is now setting up a workers' party for the first time, is no exception. We in Germany have left behind the first phase of the internal struggles (with the Lassalleans); other phases still lie before us. Unity is quite a good thing so long as it is possible, but there are things which stand above unity. And when, like Marx and myself, one has all one's life fought harder against self-styled Socialists than against anyone else (for we regarded the bourgeoisie only as a class and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois), one cannot be greatly grieved that the inevitable struggle has broken out." ...- End of Critique of A.P.'s Preface. - After the SLP eliminated peaceful means of internal struggle, writing about it on the outside of it became the only alternative. Such is the fruit of the Party's censorious, bureaucratic, secretive and sectarian ways.The Aftermath At some point in my Section's agenda, it had been decided to unite business meetings with the study class, take care of business first, and study afterwards. After distributing my critique of A.P.'s Preface to Engels' "Socialism: From Utopia to Science" to Section Santa Clara County, and after giving them a couple of weeks to digest it, I moved for a discussion of my critique. However, they were in the middle of discussing Lenin's "The State and Revolution", and didn't want to interrupt it. After a brief discussion, they tabled my motion, and the consensus was that discussing my critique would be reconsidered after the Section completed studying "The State and Revolution", though, at that point, I began to suspect that they would never get around to it. But, I went along with their plan because the reading of Lenin would help expose some of the more poorly educated members to a different concept of the state, and anything they could learn about Leninism's closer approximation to Marxism would come in handy during a discussion of my critique. It also gave me a little more time in which I could save more money for a time when I might be unemployed for a while. The following is part of a draft of a letter written to a member right about that time: "You might ask how I can possibly survive working at the NO, knowing what I know. I must admit that relations have been strained, but I am tolerated because 1) I learned a long while back how to do my work well even under great emotional stress if I thought there was a goal worth working for, and 2) my Comrades have not even attempted to refute my theories and have even expressed partial agreement when I forced them to say something, and 3) I feel that there is so much force behind the principle of exposing deceptions that it is only a matter of time before my views .... {Manuscript broke off.} 'But the fact is that my position at the nerve center is both advantageous and disadvantageous. It is advantageous because I can keep a good eye on the general mood of the Party as a whole {this statement contradicts the alienation I always felt as a shipping clerk, but I was much closer to the scene of the crime than were the members of the outlying Sections} and I can keep the kind of perspective on the Party that would be unobtainable in a Section ... It is disadvantageous in that I have found it impossible to get the "leadership" of the Party interested enough in my ideas to do anything with them. They have been very non-committal so far and this fact has been a source of bitterness in the past between us, but I realize that they cannot do everything. They pour in so much energy into just maintaining the organization and doing positive things, that any effort to come up with a new coherent line must come from an entity different from an overworked leadership. The problem we face is a universal problem throughout the Party and the source is no longer a conspiracy against the revolution by any group or unit within the Party. This is why we can now cure ourselves and even stay together in the process, painful though it will be.' Parts of this paragraph were very conciliatory toward those I also accused of blocking my process. It is one of the few written reminders of the great internal conflict between alternately blaming the Party and myself for my inability to accomplish the changes that needed to occur. Though I wrote many a personal letter to some members back East, I never got much encouragement from them to keep doing my research, nor (with the exception of one) was I made aware that they agreed or disagreed with what I wrote. Their general failure to respond to the ideas in my letters was always disappointing. At first I did little more than point out quotes that A.P. had taken out of context, but I got no response at all. That was scary, as I could not figure out if the member in question was simply numb or was waiting for me to crack altogether, or what. Silence on my major points! In my first batch of letters, I never attacked my potential allies in the NO, and always limited my attacks to Petersen or SLP ideology, but after my quitting became inevitable, my letters started attacking my co-workers in the NO as well. During the course of my last few months with the Party, my previous jovial and amiable conversations with the Party intellectuals declined to the point of breaking off. Toward the end, the only discourse that I had that was halfway pleasant was with a few of the older members, even if it wasn't very intellectually stimulating.The Send Off During the study classes of that time period, I usually said very little, and waited patiently to someday bring up my critique of A.P.'s pamphlet. An exception to my usual reticence occurred one day while we were discussing possible forms of proletarian rule. I felt a certain level of excitement and desire to share what I had discovered about this aspect of Marxism, for I had already incorporated some of that relevant research into my critique. Being very careful not to phrase my argument in a way that would cause them to be put down violently, I somewhat apprehensively informed the class of what Engels had written in 1891 about 'the specific form of proletarian rule being a democratic republic'. To my amazement, one of the intellectuals piped up and exclaimed in a veritable shout, "Engels was wrong!!" 'Wrong', thought I, as the words reverberated in my ears for a while. If Engels was wrong, then I had to have been wrong as well, but, because Engels had made his statement so emphatically and so positively, I had all along thought that Engels was right. But I had not yet read everything he and Marx had written about the democratic republic, so I didn't have much of a solid platform from which to argue. All I could do was to clam up, do some more homework, and hope to bring it up again in the future if the evidence I found seemed overwhelming. After it was over, I sulked over the incident for awhile, and I could not recall it without feeling as though I had been swindled one more time. But, thought I, there might still be a little hope that my critique would be picked up off the table, and we would see who was right and who was wrong. But, ignorant was I of the plans that the intellectuals wanted to impose on the members. After the Section finished studying Lenin's "The State and Revolution", we picked up my old motion about whether or not to discuss my critique of Petersen's Preface, and they decided not to discuss it, a decision that I had pretty much expected by that time. Still, the drama had to be played out, and, at that point, I threatened to quit the Party if it wasn't discussed, but my threat to quit brought no reaction at all. The Section didn't even want to discuss what the Party had upheld for decades as the correct theory of the state. Instead, they moved to a discussion of the possible necessity of the workers to take state power within the framework of Socialist Industrial Unionism! For the second time in the meeting, I felt betrayed and invalidated. I was overwhelmed by the audacity of the intellectuals. I had never been one for thinking on my feet too well, and I'll admit that I was in a double state of shock at the additional news of making the SIUs into state organizations. I sat back and thought about two things: 1) how I was going to depart the Party and the NO, and 2) the absolute treachery of my fellow Comrades, who were probably going to ram home the idea of "fighting SIUs" through the Section, the National Executive Committee, and then the whole rest of the Party, without increasing the understanding of the members by one iota. Later on, I remembered what I had been taught so many times about the SIU being the specific form into which workers must organize in order to avoid having to take (capitalist) state power for the tasks of socialist reconstruction, but the intellectual cream of the National Office was now telling us that the SIU might be used in a manner that would have had A.P. and De Leon turning over in their graves. All that was regarded as essential from "The State and Revolution" was the fact that 'workers' state power would be arrived at with new forms of workers' organizations', and that, 'since the SIU could be described as a new form of workers' organization, it could logically be expected to play a role as an organization of state power', a logic that completely ignored the more official logic of 'the SIU rendering state power unnecessary.' At the end of ramrodding such an important theoretical matter through Party bureaucracy without discussion, the members would remain in complete ignorance about how the Party could have arrived at such a new conflicting position on the SIU, but the intellectuals could probably have cared less, just as long as they could fulfill their goals, which included: 1) presenting to the American workers a Party program that was not so ridiculously pacifist as to totally exclude the possibility of either a violent revolution or a dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie; 2) doing the above in a manner that appeared logical and grounded in Marxism and the philosophy of the Party, thereby eliminating criticism on those grounds; and 3) doing the above in a manner that didn't alienate the older members by directly attacking the falsifications of Marxism that gave birth to the Party's fraudulent anarchist program in the first place.Unity and Separation The bad times I endured during my last ten months with the Party were probably the most disagreeable ones I ever lived through. I had to live with the conflict of knowing that my labor was being used to confuse the working class, but the goal of enlightening my fellow members coupled with my poor financial circumstances had been enough to warrant my staying on for awhile. Though I failed in my immediate goal of enlightening anyone to my satisfaction at the time, the idea grew that at least someday I would write a book about it, but it took 15 years for the right circumstances to arrive. I really hoped at one time to see unity between myself and the intellectuals by cooperating with them on a mutual attack on the fraudulent premises of the Party program. I thought at one time that one plausible reason why that unity had never happened was that the others were probably afraid that that particular kind of digging into Party history might have resulted in their getting fired. It's difficult for me to assess the sentiment of the NEC very well, since I didn't get to know but one of them to any extent, but I do suppose that they could have had a bunch of us fired for attacking the Party program. But then, who would have been left to write the Weekly People and keep the Party together? The NEC would surely have had to take those dire straits into account, so getting fired can be dismissed as having been the problem that the intellectuals might have been worried about. A more plausible reason why that unity never happened was that the NO staff had already invested so much of their lives perpetuating the fraud, or simply allowing it to be perpetuated, and could not easily be expected one day to proceed in the opposite direction just because one individual came around and pointed out a not particularly comfortable path for them to follow. They probably thought that it was far better for the SLP to die a predictable and slow death mired in fraud, bureaucracy, censorship, secrecy, and a cult of De Leonist personality, than to take a chance on a whole lot of truth getting out, upsetting the old dogma and making life just a little too unpredictable than the one that could be obtained by working forty hours with a reliable pay-check at the end of each week. About the potential for such unity, I wrote to a member: "At one time, when I had just begun to uncover the mountain of lies, I had thought that my colleagues at the NO would help me to explain the lies and their significance to the rest of the members so that the members would decide for themselves what to do ... "What was uncovered in the following nine months, however, was not so much the lies in Party literature, but the depth of the rottenness of the 'Comrades' who determined that this information should never reach the membership. Some of my Comrades had been critical of Party literature long before I had even heard of the SLP, but were far more willing to prostitute themselves to the fleshpots of Petersenism than I had ever suspected any 'socialist' to be capable." 'But no group is as dedicated to certain truths than some of my Comrades, however. One truth that they must certainly recognize is the decline of the Party. In their efforts to gain more members, they have decided to inject a little Leninism into SLP ideology. They will try to reconcile the irreconcilable - Anarchy and state power! And the way it will be done will be by proposing that the Socialist Industrial Unions become organs of state power, in spite of my having been taught that the SIU is the specific form into which the proletariat should organize so as to avoid the use of the state or state power. Maybe the new talent of the NO will be no less adept at burying the history of the SIU than the old talent was at burying the history of the proletariat. 'The Party has been doing as much harm with its lies as good, so any diminution of its effectiveness by its disappearance would be as much a blessing for the workers as a pain for the NO. Some of the staff might be basically honest, but they are so scared of doing anything to lose their income that they have accepted the plan of slowly reforming the Party, and under no circumstances revealing the truth about the Party or Petersen. They will not do anything that will jeopardize the flow of money from the pockets of the Petersenites, of whom the party is mostly composed. "Thus, my thesis that the Party members were basically honest and would be able to understand how Petersen lied and would want to do something about it took a back seat to the NO clique's theory that the Party consisted of stupid babies who would abandon the NO if disparaging comments about Petersen's theories were allowed to be freely circulated within the Party. But this was only a cover for their greed. If the Party really cared about truth, they would throw out the NO if they thought the NO was withholding something. 'The NO knew that Petersen was dishonest intellectually, and that what I had to say was nothing new to them. But rather than allowing the information to come out as quickly ... by allowing freedom of speech, they instead put a clamp on it so that they could continue to live their suburban lives. One of them even said that their plan was to 'someday come down hard on Petersen' and that the half-million bucks that the party had saved was going to 'pay our salaries for the next twenty years'. "Rather than be part of their plan, I opted out. It was objectionable to me because I saw myself as merely being used by them to help spread Petersen's lies so that the NO could stay alive. But having fought so very hard for ten years to seek and spread understanding, I knew that I could not prostitute myself to their plan. I thought of all of the people who might be in a position of truth-searching that I was once in, and I could betray them by spreading lies at the rate of $3.50 per hour? Perhaps for $4.50 or $5.00 per hour, I could be so rotten. But I was beginning to despise the filth of the whole situation, so I was not about to ask for a raise, even though there might have been a chance that I could command it. I was a damned good shipping clerk. I kept busy all of the time and gave the Party its full money's worth. "That the NO clique was merely using me and the other four {who quit at nearly the same time} was evidenced by the statement of one of the clique at our very last session when I was threatening to quit, to the effect: "Why are you being so unreasonable? We treat you well." Later on I interpreted the statement to mean 'Why can't you keep your mouth shut like we do and enjoy your life?'" Never having had the money to enjoy life like a bourgeois, that may have been why I was more interested in correcting social injustice wherever I found it, even in the midst of a Party that was ostensibly dedicated to doing just that.Psychological Conflicts My failure to lead the Party out of its difficulties was a big problem for me. I had for a long time been bothered with the feeling that someone else in my shoes, in better control of their lives, just a little more street wise, or somehow able to cope with similar opportunities, or what-have-you, could have done what I only dreamed of doing. The discovery of something rotten that others were making a living from, and sought to perpetuate, if not in original form, then at least intact in general intent - perhaps the interests of the other players in the game were sufficient to doom the efforts of anyone like myself who would have rid the Party of its rotten roots. Rules against discussing inner Party business with Party sympathizers, against talking about the business of one Section with members of other Sections, the near total lack of meaningful response from other members, the paranoia that led me to feel that even to talk about what was on my mind would only lead to my ostracism or even to my death, my own history of limited achievement in expressing myself - all of those factors combined to leave me quite isolated, and may have been sufficient in themselves to condemn my efforts to failure. Of these conflicts, I wrote: 'I found it easy at times to blame my failures entirely on the existing machinery. In letters to Comrades back east, I ranted and raved at 'the lack of democracy within the Party.' I fulminated endlessly that 'there was more freedom of speech in the very state machine that the SLP had sworn to abolish.' I have not been alone in this charge against the Party, for many others have made the same accusation. In my case, however, I could not decisively blame the Party as much as I would have wanted, due to my failure to fully exhaust my administrative remedies. Though I was running out of remedies, I still feel that I could have done more, but when I was denied the right to speak to my Section, I decided to end what could have turned out to be an endless pattern of denial of my right to speak. Maybe I was right, I may never know for sure. The fact that someone said to someone else that "Ken really got f----d over", and that sentence found its way back to me, indicates that I might never have been allowed to speak. But, as mentioned already, I will never know, as I simply gave up, threw in the towel, and walked out.' 'The biggest mistake I made (so that others may learn) was my reluctance to vigorously pursue my goal. By pursuing my arguments through my Section, where they were easily prevented from reaching the rest of the Party, I instead could have used my strategic position as a NO employee to write a letter to the NEC simply stating that I would refuse to ship out any more copies of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism", and "Karl Marx and Marxian Science", listing some of the major lies from each work. It might have been my fear of being dismissed that kept me from consciously considering that option.' "The most detrimental factor to the unfortunate outcome of my case was my fear of being immediately dismissed for a too forceful pursuit of my goal as Party reformer. Thus I didn't conceptualize more forceful modes of struggle that might have realized my goal of ..." {Manuscript broke off here.} 'Amazingly enough, I was never attacked for my conflict with the program. I thought for sure that some rabid Industrial Unionist was going to someday bring me up on the charge of being in conflict with the program, but it never happened. If it had happened early in the game, I never would have had much of a chance to prove my points. Later on, when things got boring, I might have welcomed being challenged. I think that the reason that I was never brought up on charges was the fact that I continued to do my work conscientiously and, except for my paper challenges, vocally I remained relatively subdued.' I felt guilty for not continuing to torture myself by tying the Party around my neck like the albatross in the poem. The self-torture went on and on, and here is a sample: "I would have been willing to stay on had the Party been willing to be liberal enough to allow my new-found discoveries of dishonesty and the substantive issues of what the Party should do about them to be discussed within the whole Party. But nothing becomes so simply because one wishes it so, and the desire for freedom of speech was not going to be won by me, because I was not willing to work for it. And here I must take issue with something I said in my last letter to the effect that the Party was too bourgeois to want to do anything about the deceptions it unwittingly perpetrates on the working class. I was merely rationalizing my own unwillingness to struggle for what I believed to be correct ... And by refusing to struggle and by giving up, I naturally have discredited my whole argument and all of the work that I did and wished to go on doing because I was too weak to really fight it out within the Party. "I therefore abandoned the honest people of the Party, i.e., the people who would not be repeating the mistakes that have been repeated so many decades simply because the mistakes seemed so plausible to people who were never interested in Marxism enough to find out what it really is. "So these were my motivations for staying and leaving. Would it have helped the movement if I had stayed in the Party and fought it out to the end? I wasn't motivated to do it, in this Party, at least, so it's impossible to say. I was just killing time, and consider my Party involvement to be just so much water over the dam, like so much else of my life, a waste of time, a mass of sound and fury, signifying nothing."The Departure My associates must have understood that I was not afraid to upset the applecart, and they must have decided that, in this particular war, it was far better for one radical to be sacrificed than for half of the NO to be sacrificed. They must have sensed that I was on the verge of quitting anyway, for one can only stand to be disappointed in one's Comrades just so long before reaching the breaking point. I had already planned that, if the Section failed to discuss my critique, I would definitely quit. And so I did. But it took a couple of weeks. I informed the National Secretary of my intentions, and at first planned to stay long enough to train someone to do my job, but that would have taken too long, and I really couldn't stand being around much longer. So after waffling in my intentions to train someone else, or appeal to the NEC, and after lasting two weeks beyond the fatal Section meeting, I went back to the NO late on a Friday night, cleaned out my locker, and put my key in an envelope along with a note as to my intentions to desert the Party, and tossed it in the door slot. What a relief it was to be finally rid of them! I didn't care how much, if any, the Party might have suffered as a result of my sudden departure. I would have been much happier to see the Party dissolve into nothing than to have it go on spreading the lies that had deceived me and perhaps so many others. Right around the same time, and entirely unrelated to my own departure, the four new people who had come to work at the NO had become so dissatisfied with their jobs that they quit the NO as well. I can remember one of them complaining that the articles he and another had spent long hours preparing were not being printed, or were severely butchered. The five of us hung around with each other for a little while afterwards, but since they didn't have much conflict with the Party program and philosophy, I didn't have that much in common with them. I was disappointed that they didn't join in with my criticisms of the Party program, but no one seemed very interested. Some time after we had left the Party, one of them mentioned to me that one of the intellectuals had told him that "Ken really got f----d over." This told me right away that the intellectuals knew very well what they were doing by denying me the right to try to sway the opinion of the Section. They were well aware that they were rationing the scarce resource of freedom of speech to only those who already had it, namely, themselves. Of this freedom of speech issue, I wrote to a member: "My very own Section has admitted in its own Minutes of October, 1976, that examples of misinformation exist in SLP literature. But when I tried, just this past study class of March 28, 1977, to convince the Section to take the first step to getting these important matters discussed before the Party, they turned me down cold, and in full knowledge that I would quit if they turned me down. I had waited months for the Section to finish reading "The State and Revolution" so that we could discuss evidence of distortion on the very question of the state, a subject which I had written about and submitted to the Section for discussion in November of 1976. "But, to them, what I wished to discuss further was not important enough to go before the Party, though they did admit that the question of the use of the state by the workers was important enough to advocate that the SIUs could and should be state organizations, in spite of the fact that for more than 70 years the program has been generally considered ... to have been designed specifically to render such use of the state by the workers unnecessary. "To the Section, however, this advocacy of the SIUs as state organizations is not contradictory at all, no insult to anyone's intelligence, not at all. It is probably no more contradictory than were the claims of A.P. that Engels did not know the difference between state capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. "Perhaps it is felt by the ruling clique that if enough little changes are made to the Party program, Party history will look muddled enough in theoretical content to allow increasingly larger changes to occur in the future with only manageable disruption. The older portion of the Party, which is often blamed for "holding back Party progress because of their dogmatic methods" does not take kindly to changes in Party positions because of their instinctive knowledge that the explanations for the changes advanced so far have been inadequate, to say the least." In one letter, I came down real hard on my fellow workers at the National Office: 'There are only two possible explanations for their present activities. One: that they are truly conscious of the value of anarchist theories in splitting the working class movement and are agents of the state, or Two: that they are merely prostitutes, and maintain a semblance of interest in Petersen's theories only to maintain a level of income from Petersen's idolizers, while at the same time trying to convert to a more Leninist position on state power in an effort to attract those workers who know or suspect that the SIU is nothing more than anarcho - syndicalist nonsense. In this manner they will be able to discard the Petersen faction that they often make fun of when they think they are in safe circle of friends. At any rate, the hostility of the NO staff to Petersen's writings became less and less of a secret the more I got involved.' Because I was so green for so long, and blamed all of my failures on my own inadequacies, a vicious circle evolved in which I blamed myself for everything and lost self-confidence. I didn't realize then how much the cards were stacked against anyone who would have wanted to do for their Party what I wanted to do for mine, and I might have dismissed as ridiculous any possibility that my own problems were not caused exactly by myself alone. The nice part about struggling for clarity is that eventually I found a sense of balance and peace within myself, even if my first attempts to defeat oppression resulted in ridiculous mistakes, and temporarily worsened various situations.Freedom of Information and Censorship The subjects of freedom of information and censorship were not treated as objects of interest while I was a member, thoughts thereof seemingly absent in the minds of the membership. The Party's work of promoting the SIU was self-explanatory, issues within the Party apparently non-existent. And yet, there was a subterranean roar, members and Sections continued to be expelled, but no one who wasn't in the fray had any idea of what the issues could have been about. Such matters were 'handled' by the National Secretary and his alleged 'rubber-stamp' NEC. If the Party administrators were not infallible and perfect, but instead had their own axes to grind and didn't want their own foibles too closely examined, they protected themselves from criticism from the rank-and-file by promoting strict control over intra-Party information, labeling any attempt of the Party to inform itself as a "lampoon". I once drafted the following to a member: "The refusal of the NO staff to cooperate with me to expose the fraud in SLP literature created the tensions that caused me to walk out. I could no longer pretend that I didn't despise them thoroughly, but neither could I openly express my anger. In their stubbornness to maintain control of the Party by seeing that only their "carefully selected" viewpoints were allowed to be disseminated "legally" within the Party, they trampled on the first principle of democracy - equal freedom of expression - and this caused myself and finally four others to walk out. "The significance of this lack of freedom is that there is a lot of dirt to be hidden, dirt which can be uncovered only by a concerted effort of a strong enough portion of the membership who are conscientious enough to demand the truth and demand putting an end to the lies and falsifications that presently make the SLP program and literature objects of scorn and derision among the proletariat. "Their defense to their upperhandedness is that the 'The Party is not ready for certain topics', which translates into 'We will not be able to retain power if certain things are allowed to be discussed.' 'Certain things', such as the truth." 'Party organizational procedures make it possible for the central group to dominate because freedom of information dissemination is not guaranteed but has to be funneled and digested by that body before it can be allowed to spread to the rest of the Party. Instead of serving the Party, the NO dominates the Party. Where is this a principle of democracy? 'If everyone in the Party had heard all of the lies about socialism before, and were properly immunized, what would be the harm of any individual spreading 'lies'? And if this individual were really sincere and was making honest mistakes, then what is the harm of at least hearing this person out and correcting the mistakes instead of suppressing the viewpoints so that they can not even be heard? Would not the correcting of the mistakes be good training for all of the members involved? Let it not be forgotten that I also had a track record of some of my major points being agreed on by my Section.' A Section that contained the bulk of the professional intellectuals of the Party, besides. 'If the Party cannot allow for the voice of one faction to be heard on an equal level with that of another, then the faction that wins all of the time will keep on winning until it finds itself quite alone, and then it may continue to split up further within itself. This process is what is happening now and will continue to happen until the right of a minority viewpoint to be heard is guaranteed.' "The {internal Party} newsletter is a sham because the NS is the one who determines the content thereof, and I know there was no way I could get my stuff printed without the backing of my Section, and they wouldn't even let me present it to them." The ways in which internal communications are handled in the SLP make it possible for the faction in power to tyrannize other viewpoints. If one's views match those of one's Section and later the internal Party bulletin editors, then there's no problem, and everything that everybody already agrees with gets rehashed one more time. If one's views don't agree with those of one's Section, then they have little hope of making their views known legally. The frustrating experience of many members, past or present, lends credibility to the theory that, with respect to freedom of expression, Party democracy is more limited than that of the state that the Party is sworn to abolish. Why should one's Party be more oppressive than one's government in any respect? Any group that seeks to publish propaganda of its own for internal and external distribution is subject to censure by the Party executive, as in the case of the 'New Unionists' of a few years back. On the other hand, any group within the confines of the state is considerably more free to publish most anything they wish, and even have it delivered by the U.S. Post Office. A.P. may have learned his own undemocratic ways from his predecessors in a Danish Party that Engels criticized in a December 1889 letter to Gerson Trier in Copenhagen, in which Engels philosophized about the relation of freedom of speech to the workers' party (MEW 37, pp. 327-8): "With regard, now, to the procedure of the Hovedbestyrelsen {Supervising Committee} toward you and your friends, such a summary expulsion from the party has happened in the secret societies from 1840-51; the secret organization made it unavoidable. It has furthermore happened, and often enough, with the English physical force Chartists under the dictatorship of O'Connors. But the Chartists were a party directly organized to strike out, as the name says, therefore they were under a dictatorship, and expulsion was a military measure. On the other hand, in times of peace, I know of a similar arbitrary procedure only of the Lassalleans of J. B. von Schweitzer's "strict organization"; von Schweitzer needed it because of his suspicious dealings with the Berlin Police, and thereby only hastened the dissolution of the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein. Among the socialist workers' parties existing today it would hardly occur to a single one - after Mr. Rosenberg in America {SLP} eliminated himself - to treat an opposition, which grew out of it, after the Danish model. It belongs to the life and well-being of any party that out of it more moderate and more extreme directions develop and fight each other, and those who simply exclude the more extreme ones only encourage their growth. The workers' movement is based on the sharpest critique of existing society, critique is its vital element; how can it remove itself from criticism, forbid debate? Are we demanding from others free speech for us, only to abolish it again in our own ranks?" It's too bad that Rosenberg did not take his censorious techniques with him when he left the SLP, but this type of censorship is exactly what the Party bureaucracy has practiced for a long time. I found it also indicative of the immaturity of the American movement as a whole that this portion of Engels' letter to Trier was not readily available in the English language until just recently. Did parties and groups lobby publishers to omit this portion of the letter so as to be better able to blame their totalitarian practices on ignorance? Food for thought. Lenin struggled for many years against the censorship of the Tsarist regime of Russia, and he also recognized the destructive effects of the lack of freedom to freely discuss theoretical material within his own party. More than once he campaigned for theoretical journals for the RSDLP members to discuss their views. In his June, 1914 "Report of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party to the Brussels Conference", Lenin struggled with a faction of "liquidators", and proposed dealing with their propaganda in the following way (LCW 20, p. 519): "7. The existence of two rival newspapers in the same town or locality shall be absolutely forbidden. The minority shall have the right to discuss before the whole Party, disagreements on programme, tactics and organisation in a discussion journal specially published for the purpose, but shall not have the right to publish, in a rival newspaper, pronouncements disruptive of the actions and decisions of the majority. "Inasmuch as the liquidators' newspaper in St. Petersburg, which is supported chiefly by bourgeois, not proletarian funds, is published contrary to the will of the acknowledged and indisputable majority of the class-conscious Social-Democratic workers in St. Petersburg, and causes extreme disorganisation by advocating disregard for the will of the majority, it shall be deemed necessary to close this newspaper immediately and to issue a discussion journal in its place." In 1921, an alleged 'anarcho-syndicalist deviation' known as the "Workers' Opposition", led by Alexandra Kollontai, campaigned for industrial unions and workers' control in the Soviet Union. Even though Lenin disagreed with them, much of their propaganda was ordered printed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and Kollontai herself was granted a seat on the Central Committee. Compare that treatment to how my critiques of A.P.'s theories were treated. In a certain inner-Party communication, the NS complained about my 'pre-occupation with distortions in Party literature', but I never learned if the NEC Subcommittee or the NEC itself had been allowed to gather any idea of the specifics of my charges of 'distortions'. On page 16 of the SLP's edition of Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Programme", a line of Marx's prefatory letter to W. Bracke of May, 1875 that was critical of the Lassallean faction of his German party was replaced by a series of dots. In the interests of the education of interested parties, here is the sentence that the SLP found too dangerous to print (MESW III, p.12): "One had obviously a desire to stifle all criticism and to give one's own party no opportunity for reflection." Now, would the Party have been hurt very much by printing that sentence? Probably not. But, a Party leadership that was so guilty of manipulating its own members became paranoid enough about their learning that the same kind of manipulation could have happened within other parties at other times, that it resorted to the additional crime of omitting pertinent passages from the historical writings of the founders of socialism. The extreme horror of the Party's perpetration of fraud against the working class required the studied exercise of the weapon of censorship to maintain it. The acceptance of secrecy and censorship by the members also prepared them to accommodate themselves to the growing climate of authoritarian oppression in the country, even though, in the same country in which the Party program met with comparatively little interference from government, there was no rational need for the Party to operate within its shroud of secrecy, unless its secrecy was designed to prevent its fraud from becoming known to its members, in the same way that the secrecy of government keeps its own fraud and crime from being detected by the public. As above, so below.Party Process The following is from the bulk of a draft of a letter about how various Party positions were achieved: 'The position change on the Vietnamese War came about as the result of a criticism of an April 1975 Weekly People article on the Vietnamese victory over the Americans. The matter went to the NEC, and, almost without discussion, they changed the Party position on the nature of the conflict. Then it was recapped once again at the '76 Convention, and I will bet that not one per cent will remember or understand how the original position (three-way superpower conflict) was arrived at or why the new position was not that much better.' "Then on the union question came the reprinting of the "Mines to the Miners" pamphlet which advocated members working within the unions. Again the question was handled by the NEC, but they complained that they didn't have the time to consider all of the implications of a position change and they were surprised that it should have to be decided upon without more discussion. "Though a swallow doth not a summer make, I could see a real precedent growing that the "new" NO, which claims to have "done more to bring democracy to the Party than any other group in history", was going to use the same methods of "getting things done" as did the previous administration. "This is all leading up to a plan by the NO to make state organizations out of the SIUs, perhaps at the next Convention, and perhaps without giving the membership the opportunity to reflect and discuss these important questions. In other words, instead of proclaiming that the SIUs are deficient and giving the members a year or so to carry on a free discussion (uncensored), most of the members do not know what plans the NO has for them, and what a surprise this one will be! 'Is it not your experience that the SIUs are the specific form into which the workers should organize so as to avoid having to take state power? Wouldn't it seem a little contradictory if these SIUs, just because they are organizations of working people, should become state organizations? And isn't the idea so wonderful that a paper that I wrote that attacked the problem of state power on a much more fundamental level five months ago, should be deemed not fit to discuss on the Section floor and instead be repressed? Democracy in action - business as usual. The new NO has shown itself to be as interested in bona-fide criticism as the old one.' * * * So far in this book, only a relatively small number of theoretical issues in SLP literature have been examined, but now that a few preliminary theories have been explored, the pamphlet that had originally so outraged me with its falsifications will be investigated further in order to see what else therein can also be proven to be false. Almost all of the analyses from here on were written after 1992.(End Part C. Continued in Part D.)Left Wing Lies Part D Ken Ellis (Part D)PART FOUR: "PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY VS. DICTATORSHIPS AND DESPOTISM" REVISITED We will skip over the nerve-grating, six-page Introduction by A. J. Taylor, and proceed directly to Arnold Petersen's Foreword, where, on pages 11, 12 and 13 of his pamphlet, A.P. gave a fictional description of Lenin's relationship to both De Leon and the SLP.p. 11:"FOREWORD. "In reviewing the life and work of Daniel De Leon one is impressed with the striking similarity between De Leon's character, achievements and the recognition (or the lack of it) {1} and treatment accorded him by most of his contemporaries, and the character, achievements, etc., of his great predecessor Karl Marx, and, in a more limited sense, of Nicolai Lenin as well. {2}Each of these three outstanding personalities in the Socialist movement sprang from the wealthy bourgeoisie; each gave up a brilliant career to dedicate himself to the cause of the exploited proletariat; each, upon leaving the "sacred precincts" of his class, abandoned the ideology, the principles and the traditions of his class, and accepted unreservedly the principles of the revolutionary working class movement, planting himself squarely and with no thought of eventual retreat, on the basis of the class struggle. Each led a life of poverty and privation, entirely unlike the majority of the so-called intellectuals who, either as lawyers or writers, carried with them into the Socialist movement their special or petty bourgeois ideology and prejudices, frequently using the labor movement to enrich themselves at the expense of that movement. "Each of these three men was largely ignored by the bourgeois officialdom of his time, and by the professional and usually corrupt labor leaders and supposed fellow Socialists. {3}Each was accused of being arrogant, domineering, tyrannical, sectarian, intolerant and what not, and each was abused and vilified solely because of his single-minded devotion to scientific principles and persevering pursuit of correct principles and tactics. {4} Marx and Lenin have achieved a partial recognition, which is bound to increase as the capitalist system in general utterly degenerates. {5} The recognition of De Leon will be, if anything, even more striking and universal once the American working class begins to realize that it must take the road of revolution, and when it begins to understand what means and methods must be employed, and when it becomes thoroughly convinced that there is no traveling back on the road to the past. {6} "The case of Lenin, to the blind worshipper or to the special advocate of false and mostly anarchist notions, must at times appear a puzzling one. {7} For it can be shown that Lenin at times has made statements and observations which are flatly contradicted by utterances elsewhere in his writings and his speeches. {8} The apparent inconsistencies, however, are easily understood once we realize that the Lenin of post-1918 days is a somewhat different Lenin from the one of ante-1918 days, the reason for the difference being that before 1918 Lenin, like most of his contemporaries, was in total ignorance of the life and works of Daniel De Leon. {9} It was not so with the later Lenin. In 1918 and subsequent years, Lenin devoted himself to a study of De Leon's works, recognizing (and giving unreserved expression to the recognition) in De Leon a Marxist of the highest order and without a peer during the time that he worked in the Socialist cause. {10} So impressed was Lenin with the works of De Leon that he decided to have them translated into Russian. {11} Arthur Ransome observes that Lenin had introduced a few phrases of De Leon into the draft for the new program of the Communist Party, as if [said Ransome] "to do honor to his memory." {12} It is obvious then that Lenin, after reading De Leon, had begun to modify his ideas especially as regards highly developed capitalist countries. We have every reason to assume that if Lenin had been spared another ten or twenty years, he would have come out in open and all but unqualified recognition of the correctness of De Leon's principles and tactics as applied to ultra capitalist countries. {13} Lenin, however, was given scarcely more than three years of active life after the Bolshevik Revolution. For although he died in January 1924, it must be remembered that for almost an entire year he lived in retirement to recuperate from the effects of the wounds inflicted upon him by a cowardly assassin. And even after his return to an active life he was scarcely able to do more than attend to the most important and pressing problems which presented themselves. Moreover, one must never forget that he had virtually a continent on his hands, a fact which should go a long way toward explaining his seeming acquiescence in some of the craziest stunts of the then Zinoviev-led Third International. Though this may be speculation, it is speculation that is fully justified by the facts and circumstances known to us. {14} "It has often been assumed that we are indebted to a renegade SLP member in Russia for Lenin's knowledge of De Leon. Arthur Ransome's statement proves beyond a doubt that this assumption is erroneous. Ransome quotes Lenin as saying that "he had read in an English Socialist paper a comparison of his own theories with those of an American, Daniel De Leon. HE HAD THEN BORROWED SOME OF DE LEON'S PAMPHLETS FROM REINSTEIN (who belongs [belonged] to the Party which De Leon founded in America), read them for the first time and was amazed to see how far and how early De Leon had pursued the same train of thought as the Russians." {15} It is reasonable then to assume that the SLP renegade referred to had kept his De Leonism securely under lock and key, in fear no doubt of making himself unpopular, until he was actually requested by Lenin to open his "treasure chest" of De Leon's pamphlets. "Students of Socialist thought and history will do well to remember these facts, for they fully explain {16} not only the seeming inconsistencies in Lenin's writings and speeches, but they also justify, as I have already stated, the conclusion that Lenin would have accepted all that is essential in "De Leonism," and having so accepted would have urged, and undoubtedly caused, the acceptance of the De Leon principles by the crude movement then taking shape in the United States of America, and which now, in plain denial of Marxian principles, has developed into an Anarcho-Communist movement. {17} That this would have materially altered the course of events in America, that it would have resulted in a powerful Marxian movement based on all that is essential (and what isn't?) in the De Leon principles and tactics, no one can doubt. However, this, too, is speculation and it would be fruitless to dwell upon it or to pursue it further. {18} The so-called labor movement had taken a certain course, and hard as the work may be on the scientific Marxists of America, that movement will have to be deflected from that course and directed into channels that run parallel with the social and economic trend of present-day Industrial America." {19} "A.P." Petersen began by alleging similarities in the backgrounds of Marx, De Leon and Lenin that may or may not be true, but, since volumes would have to be compared to verify them, we will avoid making quantitative comparisons of lifestyles the subject of this book and move on to matters of fact and theory that can be more easily verified. A.P. heaped praise upon the three in abundance, probably in hopes of convincing his audience that they were all part of the same Marxist club, and that De Leon had Marxist credentials at least as valid as those of Lenin, but, unlike both Marx and Lenin, I have seen no indication that De Leon had been hounded out of one country after another, nor that he had been compelled to spend years in exile. What follows is a closer examination of some of the points A.P. made in his text:1 'Daniel De Leon's ... recognition (or the lack of it)' ... The SLP has always looked upon De Leon's lack of recognition by the working class as not only a 'conspiracy of silence', but also 'a conspiracy against the only person whose program could liberate the workers away from wage-slavery.' But, De Leon's lack of recognition was the result of his own opportunistic muddling of Marxism, which will be further elucidated.2 'De Leon's character, achievements and the recognition (or the lack of it) and treatment accorded him by most of his contemporaries, and the character, achievements, etc., of his great predecessor Karl Marx, and, in a more limited sense, of Nicolai Lenin as well.' The SLP has always admired the leading lights of socialism in a particular order, and the quantity of admiration for each has always been manipulated in the hopes of influencing workers to admire De Leon more than Marx, and Marx more than Engels, and any of the others more than Lenin. De Leon and others in the early SLP actually boycotted Engels, but I haven't seen any evidence to show that Lenin ever boycotted Marx or Engels. By the time A.P. wrote the pamphlet under scrutiny, the SLP embraced Marx, Engels and Lenin in words, but they were almost perfectly boycotted in substance.3 'Each ... was largely ignored by the bourgeois officialdom ... labor leaders and ... fellow Socialists.' This stretched the alleged analogy between the four too far. To say that Marx and Lenin were ignored by the above groups is an absurdity, considering the volumes that continue to be written about them by scholars and historians. And, look at whom A.P. thought it was important not to be ignored by: 'bourgeois officialdom ... labor leaders and ... fellow Socialists.' Engels didn't regard very many of his fellow socialists very highly, as demonstrated by an October 1882 letter to Bebel (MESC, p. 334): ... "The development of the proletariat proceeds everywhere through internal struggles, and France, which is now setting up a workers' party for the first time, is no exception. We in Germany have left behind the first phase of the internal struggles (with the Lassalleans); other phases still lie before us. Unity is quite a good thing so long as it is possible, but there are things which stand above unity. And when, like Marx and myself, one has all one's life fought harder against self-styled Socialists than against anyone else (for we regarded the bourgeoisie only as a class and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois), one cannot be greatly grieved that the inevitable struggle has broken out." ... A.P. should also have read the March 1892 letter to Lafargue, where Engels wrote: ... 'reap the masses, and discard the leaders.'4 "Each was accused of being arrogant, domineering, tyrannical, sectarian, intolerant ... and each was abused and vilified solely because of his single-minded devotion to scientificprinciples and persevering pursuit of correct principles and tactics." Once again, we have to correct A.P. by noting that De Leon was not strong in scientific methodology, as demonstrated later in detail.5 ... 'as the capitalist system in general utterly degenerates.' If the capitalist system is degenerating now, does that mean that it was once a paragon of virtue? In "Capital" (1867), Marx wrote (NW 17, p. 760): "If money, according to Augier, "comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek," capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." Many socialists look forward to the 'collapse of capitalism' as if it will fall of its own weight and disintegrate by itself, even if all we do is sit back and wait, and then all we have to do is pick up the pieces. The fact is that capitalism will be our economic system until the abolition of class distinctions, as explained elsewhere in this book.6 "The recognition of De Leon will be, if anything, even more striking and universal once the American working class begins to realize that it must take the road of revolution, and when it begins to understand what means and methods must be employed, and when it becomes thoroughly convinced that there is no traveling back on the road to the past.' My experience with the SLP combined with the writing of this book cured me of whatever revolutionary aspirations I once harbored. I gave up on being a revolutionary in '94, and was inspired by Engels to become an evolutionary instead. In his Jan. 27, 1887 letter to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, Engels wrote (MESC, p. 378): "Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically." The events of 1989 et seq. proved that trying to apply notions of political revolution to existing democracies is the height of foolishness. The whole purpose of revolution was to bring democracy to where it previously didn't exist. Once a democracy has been established, social justice is no further away than the correct use of the newly available democratic tools.7 "The case of Lenin, to the blind worshipper or to the special advocate of false and mostly anarchist notions, must at times appear a puzzling one." This is so true. Once in a great while, A.P. wrote a gem with which I could thoroughly agree. Why? Explanation: To the membership of the SLP, and to others who have been influenced by 'false and mostly anarchist notions', and who may have become blind worshipers of A.P. and/or De Leon, the case of Lenin must be a puzzling one, due to the impossibility of reconciling Leninism with the 'false and mostly anarchist notions' promulgated by A.P. and other anarchists. Whether intentional or not, A.P. told great truths on rare occasions.8 'For it can be shown that Lenin at times has made statements and observations which are flatly contradicted by utterances elsewhere in his writings and his speeches.' Difficult as it is to maintain perfect consistency throughout one's whole lifetime, it still would have been appropriate for A.P. to have quoted just one little example to back up his accusation. But, no, we are left with no better than a vague impression of a quite inconsistent Lenin. Speaking of conflicts, let us not forget A.P.'s very own immense conflict between his 'three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success' theory promulgated in one pamphlet, and his 'matter of course transformation into socialism' theory of another pamphlet, either of which scenarios were alleged to occur after the proletariat seized the (capitalist) state.9 "The apparent inconsistencies, however, are easily understood once we realize that the Lenin of post-1918 days is a somewhat different Lenin from the one of ante-1918 days, the reason for the difference being that before 1918 Lenin, like most of his contemporaries, was in total ignorance of the life and works of Daniel De Leon." Well, at least Lenin may have had an excuse for his alleged inconsistencies, but what was A.P.'s excuse for his own? Lenin's alleged ignorance of De Leon before 1918 is highly improbable. Lenin wrote a "Preface to the Russian Translation of 'Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Friedrich Sorge and Others'" in April of 1907 (LCW 12, pp. 359-78). Therein, Lenin quoted comments by Marx and Engels on various socialist movements, including their observations of the isolation of the American Socialist Labor Party from the working class movement. While the existence of the Preface in itself does not prove that Lenin was aware of De Leon in 1907, there can be no doubt that he was aware of the SLP at least by 1907. Also, judging from Lenin's correspondence about the SLP, Lenin was critical of the Party's program from at least 1916 onwards.10 'In 1918 and subsequent years, Lenin devoted himself to a study of De Leon's works, recognizing ... in De Leon a Marxist of the highest order and without a peer' ... As reproduced in Appendix 3, the extant record of Lenin's writings about De Leon and the SLP show no indication that Lenin appreciated what De Leon wrote except for De Leon's pamphlet "Two Pages from Roman History", and his phrase "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class". At least that much is in the official record. On the other hand, much of what Lenin wrote about the SLP can easily be seen to be critical of SLP philosophy and practice. Here's the bad, the mixed, and the good, gathered from the volumes of Lenin's Collected Works. More context surrounding the following comments is given in Appendix 3.First the negative entries: "What Marx and Engels criticise most sharply in British and American socialism is its isolation from the working-class movement... they have reduced Marxism to a dogma, to "rigid [starre] orthodoxy" ... they consider it "a credo and not a guide to action" ... they are incapable of adapting themselves to the theoretically helpless, but living and powerful mass working-class movement that is marching alongside them." 1907 ... "Marx & Engels ... both condemn the sectarian character of the SLP" (1915) ... "the sectarianism of the Social-Democratic Federation and of the German-American Socialists in America reduces theory to "rigid orthodoxy" ... ((they want undeveloped workers to swallow the theory all at once))." (1916) "Will the Socialist Labour Party agree to publish, if we pay the costs? Are these people hopeless sectarians or not? ... Why don't they send us copies of their papers in theInternationale Sozialistische Kommission? (I saw some quite by chance.) Or are they maniacs with an idée fixe {fixed idea} about a special "economic" organisation of workers?" (1916) ... "the American SLP have thrown out the whole minimum programme." (1916) "It appears that the SLP is throwing out all its minimum programme" ... (1917) ... "Kollontai is afraid of anarcho-syndicalist tendencies in the SLP (N.Iv. {Bukharin}, she says, is not afraid of this). I have read in the SLP organ (The Weekly People) that they are throwing overboard their minimum programme" ... (1917) By 'minimum programme', Lenin meant 'reforms', whereas 'maximum programme' equalled 'revolution'. Here is Lenin's mixed entry: "And what of the Socialist Labour Party? After all, they are internationalists (even if there is something narrowly sectarian about them)." (1916)Here are the positive entries: ... "the question of the programme and tactics of a new socialism, genuinely revolutionary Marxism and not rotten Kautskyanism, is on the agenda everywhere. This is clear both from the SLP and The Internationalist in America" ... (1917) "Definitely a more revolutionary programme and tactics (there are elements of it in K. Liebknecht, the SLP in America" ... (1917) "They, and they alone, are internationalists in deed. In the United States, the Socialist Labour Party and those within the opportunist Socialist Party who in January 1917 began publication of the paper, The Internationalist" ... (1917) ... "our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" ... or "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America." (1920) "This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy ... are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism." (1920) "I think we should publish in Russian De Leon's Two Pages, etc., with Fraina's foreword and notes." (1920) That's it for negative and positive comments on the SLP and De Leon in the works of Lenin. There were a few more neutral comments not worth the ink to repeat in the present context. The positive stuff doesn't look like much to write home about. If Lenin really had been an admirer of De Leon's concept of an 'industrial state', there should have been some hard documentation for it. Instead, there was rather hard criticism over the 'fixed idea' of an 'economic organization'. The few interviews with Arthur Ransome that reflected Lenin's actual intent well enough to be included in the Collected Works were concerned with unrelated political and economic matters. Many references to Boris Reinstein were included in the Collected Works, but aside from an early 'suspect bird' reference, most references were to Julius and/or Armand Hammer.11 "So impressed was Lenin with the works of De Leon that he tried to have them translated into Russian." As we have just seen from the records, the single work of De Leon that Lenin seems to have been interested in having translated was "Two Pages From Roman History", which I also found to be an interesting work for its comparisons of ancient situations to modern times.12 "Arthur Ransome observes that Lenin had introduced a few phrases of De Leon into the draft for the new program of the Communist Party, as if [said Ransome] "to do honor to his memory."" If any phrases made it into the draft for the new program, were they edited out of the finished product? Once again, beyond "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class" making it into "'Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder" and into the 1920 Preface to "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", which other phrases might they have been?13 "It is obvious then that Lenin, after reading De Leon, had begun to modify his ideas especially as regards highly developed capitalist countries. We have every reason to assume that if Lenin had been spared another ten or twenty years, he would have come out in open and all but unqualified recognition of the correctness of De Leon's principles and tactics as applied to ultra capitalist countries." On the contrary, Lenin validated principles of proletarian political dictatorship and 'legal and illegal work' as much for 'ultra capitalist countries' as he did for Russia. Nor can I recall any instance of Lenin declaring that 'the principles and tactics of revolutionary class struggle vary a lot from one country to another.' A.P. could have made his allegation that 'Lenin was influenced by De Leon' a lot more convincing by documenting it with at least a scrap of direct evidence. It would have been interesting to see if Lenin endorsed the theory that 'middle-class-deficient America doesn't need a dictatorship of the proletariat over their non-existent middle classes', or a theory like 'political solutions are appropriate for backward countries like Russia, while economic solutions are appropriate for technologically advanced countries.' Lenin didn't endorse any of those theories, in spite of A.P. citing Lenin out of context to that very effect. A.P. found it easy to assert that 'If Lenin had lived longer, he would have become a De Leonist.' A.P. thus rehashed a similar sentimental trick that he played on us in his infamousPreface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", where A.P. wrote on p. XIV: 'Had Engels lived another ten or twenty years ... he would undoubtedly have realized the deficiency in his analysis' ... Isn't it sad when the credibility of the SLP program depended on what real revolutionaries would have done, thought or realized, if only they had lived longer? What if Marx had lived another 50 years; would he have seen the deficiencies in A.P.'s analyses? And if Marx had lived another 117 years, would he have approved of my analyses? We could go on with this futile way of seeking validation for our ideas, but instead it is braver to allow ideas to stand on their own merits.14 "Moreover, one must never forget that he had virtually a continent on his hands, a fact which should go a long way toward explaining his seeming acquiescence in some of the craziest stunts of the then Zinoviev-led Third International. Though this may be speculation, it is speculation that is fully justified by the facts and circumstances known to us." Here we are left to wonder, 'what were the crazy stunts of the Third International' to which Lenin allegedly acquiesced? Was A.P.'s 'speculation' over Lenin's 'seeming acquiescence' 'fully justified by the facts and circumstances'? Certainly, there are a lot of questions here that can only be answered by a close factual examination of the activities of the Third International at that time; but, without a single stated example of a 'crazy stunt', there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for delving into that history.15 "HE {Lenin} HAD THEN BORROWED SOME OF DE LEON'S PAMPHLETS FROM REINSTEIN (who belongs [belonged] to the Party which De Leon founded in America), read them for the first time and was amazed to see how far and how early De Leon had pursued the same train of thought as the Russians." With all of the research that Lenin had done on working class parties around the world, why would he suddenly act like he had never read De Leon before, especially after having been critical of the SLP since 1907? And this strange quirk about 'Lenin having been amazed to see how far and how early De Leon had pursued the same train of thought as the Russians.' Which Russians were they? Bakunin? Kropotkin? Plechanov? Was this an inadvertent hint that Lenin had noticed that De Leon was carrying on in Russian anarchist traditions?16 'Students of Socialist thought and history will do well to remember these facts, for they fully explain' ... Did A.P. lump all of his speculations in with his 'facts'? Let's look at some predictions, speculations and instances of something other than facts having been related in A.P.'s Foreword: 'partial recognition, which is bound to increase' ... 'recognition of De Leon will be ... even more striking and universal' ... 'once the American working class begins to realize that it must take the road of revolution' ... 'when it begins to understand what means and methods must be employed' ... 'when it becomes thoroughly convinced' ... 'The case of Lenin ... must at times appear a puzzling one.' 'For it can be shown that Lenin at times has made statements ... which are ... contradicted' ... 'It is obvious then that Lenin ... had begun to modify his ideas' ... 'We have every reason to assume ... he would have come out in ... recognition of the correctness' ... 'explaining his seeming acquiescence' ... 'Though this may be speculation, it is speculation that is fully justified' ... 'It is reasonable then to assume' ... 'in fear no doubt of making himself unpopular' ... 'That this would have materially altered the course of events ... it would have resulted in a powerful Marxian movement ... no one can doubt.' ... 'this, too, is speculation and it would be fruitless to dwell upon it or to pursue it further.' 'The so-called labor movement ... will have to be deflected from that course and directed into channels' ... These 16 instances of predictions, assumptions, appearances, speculations, caveats, instructions, and outright lies formed much of the basis of A.P.'s social science. So far, there seem to have been very few facts in his Foreword. But, in spite of the lack of hard documentation presented so far, A.P. suggested that (p. 14) ...17 ... 'these facts ... fully explain not only the seeming inconsistencies in Lenin's writings and speeches, but they also justify ... the conclusion that Lenin would have accepted all that is essential in "De Leonism," and ... would have urged, and undoubtedly caused, the acceptance of the De Leon principles by the crude movement then taking shape in the United States of America, and which now, in plain denial of Marxian principles, has developed into an Anarcho-Communist movement.' Now we learn that, if Lenin had lived longer, the American movement would have become De Leonist! Why not more Leninist? If Joe Schmoe had fought his way to the top of a pack of would-be leaders and had come to dominate, does anyone think he would do it in the name of someone else? Schmoe would want everyone to think like Schmoe! To think that Lenin could have caused the movement to adopt De Leonism, as though Lenin had the power to cause people to adopt whatever kind of ideology he wanted, and that they would blindly obey his instructions, stretched credulity past the breaking point. Dictatorial powers were insinuated on Lenin's character, but the powers were not to be used for his self-aggrandizement, but rather to aggrandize De Leon! A.P. seems to have taken a great liking to the term 'Anarcho-Communist', as he used it more than once. It seems to imply gratuitous violence combined with the domination of a centralized bureaucracy. The question is, whose party was A.P. describing?18 'That this would have materially altered the course of events in America, that it would have resulted in a powerful Marxian movement based on all that is essential ... in the De Leon principles and tactics, no one can doubt. However, this, too, is speculation and it would be fruitless to dwell upon it or to pursue it further.' In the past two excerpts, A.P. speculated that 'Due to Lenin's premature demise, Anarcho-Communism developed in the USA instead of Marxism-De Leonism.' What a pleasant epitaph for De Leonism, R.I.P. De Leonism was too weak to stand on its own, and, failing to win support from Lenin, it went on to obscurity, forcing charlatans to create fictional accounts of its history in vain attempts to breathe life into its rotting corpse.19 'The so-called labor movement had taken a certain course, and hard as the work may be on the scientific Marxists of America, that movement will have to be deflected from that courseand directed into channels that run parallel with the social and economic trend of present-day Industrial America.' In an insidious passage, A.P. admitted that the mission of the SLP was to deflect the labor movement off of its course, which, in 1931, was that of 'sharing work equitably among all workers by means of reducing hours of labor.' The reason why 'the work of deflecting the labor movement may be difficult' was not mentioned, but, considering the bankruptcy of the SIU program and the correctness of the popular work-sharing movement, the difficulty may then be explained by the necessity of members to distribute many more millions of leaflets to workers, a chore that was not very much appreciated. It would have been so much simpler if the SIU program had some intrinsic value whose merits could have been spread by the grapevine. That being the end of A.P.'s Foreword, we can proceed to Part I of his pamphlet "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism":"Ip. 15:"DE LEONISM-TWENTIETH CENTURY MARXISM. Skipping over A.P.'s introductory paragraph of no consequence, we arrive at: (p. 16):p. 16:"Marxism a Science. "Marxism, or Socialism if you like, is a science - it is the social science. The hall-mark of any science is its capacity, and willingness (on the part of the scientist), to reject conclusions previously formed when subsequently ascertained facts and later experiences make that necessary. {1} Likewise, to add to itself such new elements as new facts and more ripe experience make possible. {2} It has been the custom to conceive of Marxism as a product finished at the hands of the master. {3} In a certain sense this is true. Quantitatively Marxism has been added to since the days of Marx. By that I mean that expository works have been written, works applying the science of Marxism to particular events and special circumstances, but which in themselves did not constitute creative work in the science, important though they may have been. The point may be reached, however, where quantity is transmuted into quality. It is at such a point that the science becomes enlarged. {4} But let us not deceive ourselves; not every "innovation" in the field is necessarily an addition to the science of Marxism. To prove itself an addition it must (1) be a logical and harmonious extension of the fundamental principle; it must form (2) an integral part of the science - that is, once discovered, it must ever after render the science incomplete, in fact, untenable, for the absence of it; {5} and, (3) it must fill a need which theretofore, vaguely or otherwise, had been felt, and which those engaged in the Marxian movement had struggled to overcome, without deserting the central principle of Marxism. {6} The one man, and the only one, who has added qualitatively to the science of Marxism, is the American scholar, student and proletarian organizer, Daniel De Leon. {7} Since in the course of my talk this afternoon I shall have occasion to refer repeatedly to the great Russian Marxist, Nicolai Lenin, it would seem proper at this time to mention the fact that of all the reputedly great Marxists of the last thirty or forty years, he was the only one to recognize the genius of De Leon and the importance of his achievements. John Reed (who now lies buried under the Kremlin Wall), appearing before the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor Party in 1918, reported that: ""Premier Lenin is a great admirer of Daniel De Leon, considering him the greatest of modern Socialists - the only one who has added anything to Socialist thought since Marx. It is Lenin's opinion [continued Reed] that the Industrial 'State' as conceived by De Leon will ultimately have to be the form of government in Russia." {8} "This is the clearest and most definite of the numerous utterances by Lenin on De Leon's greatness and his contribution to Marxism. {9} In direct line with Reed's statement is the report of the then New York World correspondent, Arno Dosch-Fleurot, who wired his paper that: {10} ""Daniel De Leon, late head of the Socialist Labor Party in America, is playing, through his writings, an important part in the construction of a Socialist state in Russia. The Bolshevik leaders are finding his ideas of an industrial state in advance of Karl Marx's theories." {11} "It has been said that it requires genius to recognize genius. That is not quite true, for after all, if it were true, there would be quite a few geniuses in this world. To the understanding Marxist, however, it is cause for gratitude that a man of the stature of Lenin should have seen so clearly the important contribution which De Leon made to Socialist thought." {12} In this chapter, A.P. informed us that 'Marxism is indeed a social science', and that 'new discoveries require the reassessment of what previously passed as state-of-the-art knowledge.' A.P. enumerated some standards by which new scientific developments may replace the old science that becomes obsolete, De Leon was praised for his scientific acumen, and Lenin was once again trotted out to sing De Leon's praises. Let us examine a few of these points one by one:1 "The hall-mark of any science is its capacity, and willingness (on the part of the scientist), to reject conclusions previously formed when subsequently ascertained facts and later experiences make that necessary." This is not a bad assessment on A.P.'s part, and it pretty much agrees with what Engels wrote about science in his October 1890 letter to Schmidt (MESW III, p. 492): ... "The history of science is the history of the gradual clearing away of this nonsense or rather of its replacement by fresh but always less absurd nonsense." ...2 "Likewise, to add to itself such new elements as new facts and more ripe experience make possible." This also cannot be contested. But, what 'new facts and experiences' allowed the SLP to replace the 'proletarian dictatorship over the bourgeoisie' with a 'proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry'? (Unless it was Stalin's example of harsh treatment of kulaks (rich peasants)). Which 'new facts and experiences' allowed the SLP to advocate replacing the capitalist state with an administration of things, but without a transition period of proletarian dictatorship?3 "It has been the custom to conceive of Marxism as a product finished at the hands of the master." Marx's theories were based upon what he saw going on in the world that he knew. In this post-1889 era of rejection of state ownership models, as in Russia and the old Warsaw Pactnations, new government machinery has already replaced the old semi-Marxist models. The only thing truly Marxist about them was the state ownership part, which is being replaced by capitalist privatization.4 ... 'expository works have been written ... but which in themselves did not constitute creative work ... The point may be reached, however, where quantity is transmuted into quality. It is at such a point that the science becomes enlarged.' After disinforming us that the mountain of material produced since Marx did not constitute creative work, A.P. went on to throw doubt on his own assertion by implying that the sum of those increments of 'non-creative work' actually amounted to an enlargement of Marxian science, as though nothing plus nothing plus nothing ad infinitum equals something. Maybe the addition of a large enough number of zeros does yield a tangible sum after all.5 'To prove itself an addition it must be (1) a logical and harmonious extension of the fundamental principle; it must form (2) an integral part of the science - that is, once discovered, it must ever after render the science incomplete, in fact, untenable, for the absence of it' ... Thanks to A.P., we now have yardsticks by which to measure the Marxist quality of his theories, such as his 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the middle classes', 'the wielding of the capitalist state by the proletariat', and the 'three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success'. As an exercise, I'll leave it to readers to determine how well A.P.'s theories measured up to his rules 1 and 2.6 ... '(3) it must fill a need which theretofore, vaguely or otherwise, had been felt, and which those engaged in the Marxian movement had struggled to overcome, without deserting the central principle of Marxism.' Whether or not A.P.'s theories fulfilled the standards of the first two rules or not, they certainly filled the anarchists' need to discourage workers from using available political tools. On page 40 of "PD vs. D+D", A.P. defined the central principle as the: 'emancipation of the working class, i.e., the victory of the proletariat', which is perfectly consistent with Marxism.7 'The one man ... who has added qualitatively to the science of Marxism, is ... Daniel De Leon.' Has there always been competition among Marxists to see who would be the first to be recognized as adding to Marxism? Until it is disproven that all that De Leon did to Marxism was to muddle it, A.P.'s statement will remain a lie. After putting so much garbage in the mouths of the founders of socialism, A.P. assured us that De Leon lived up to the same exacting standard of garbage as well. One of the aims of this book is to show that De Leon was as guilty of crimes against consciousness as A.P. A.P. then supposedly quoted Lenin:8 ... "the Industrial 'State' as conceived by De Leon will ultimately have to be the form of government in Russia." As anyone in the SLP will attest, "Industrial State" is a contradiction in terms, for the 'Industrial Union government', by definition, is a classless, stateless administration of things. An 'industrial state' interpretation of De Leon's ideas was a perfect reflection of likewise muddled and impossible ideas.9 'This is the clearest and most definite of the numerous utterances by Lenin on De Leon's greatness and his contribution to Marxism.' If so, then I should have been able to find some evidence of truth to that claim in one of the 45 Volumes of Lenin's Collected Works, but there is nothing that comes even close to praise for any of De Leon's political and economic theories. And besides, where is the proof that it actually was an 'utterance' of Lenin? Such praise would have been worthy of a proclamation, rather than a mere 'utterance', which word has for an obsolete meaning: 'the sale or disposal (as of goods or commodities) to the public'. But, socialists would never sell us a bill of goods, would they? Ha.10 ... 'Arno Dosch-Fleurot, who wired his paper that:' ... Under circumstances favorable to his cause, A.P. was capable of quoting exactly, and his quote appears to be an exact replica of what I saw in the microfilm of the New York World of January 31, 1918. But, neither of the two concluding paragraphs that praised De Leon seemed to have any relation to the main content of the article entitled "Worst of Famines Impends in Russia". It was also interesting that the 1887 editor of the Workmen's Advocate accused Joseph Pulitzer of the World of being a 'purchasable editor' (See Appendix 2). But, even if the testimony was unsolicited, the total of it contains a strong hint that the Soviet plan for industrial organization had already been discovered without De Leon's help, even alongside the part about De Leon supposedly having affected European thought.11 'The Bolshevik leaders are finding his ideas of an industrial state in advance of Karl Marx's theories.' Could the Bolshevik leaders have been able to understand De Leon's theories and still formulate as self-contradictory a phrase as 'industrial state'? 'Industrial' implies classless and stateless society, while 'state' implies political oppression. The mere formulation of such an oxymoron implied a fundamental lack of understanding of Industrial Unionism.12 "It has been said that it requires genius to recognize genius. That is not quite true, for after all, if it were true, there would be quite a few geniuses in this world. To the understanding Marxist, however, it is cause for gratitude that a man of the stature of Lenin should have seen so clearly the important contribution which De Leon made to Socialist thought." Poking fun at genii, A.P. wrote a joke which depended on his perception, accurate or not, that some people who claimed the status of genius for themselves or others may not have deserved such status. A.P. implied that 'genius' #1 in the first sentence represented Lenin, while 'genius' #2 was De Leon, and that people shouldn't mistake Lenin for being a genius for his alleged recognition of De Leon's alleged genius. If it takes a genius to recognize a genius, then the only recognition that the genii would receive would be from each other, so - limited recognition. But, if it doesn't take a genius to recognize a genius, then the number of genii would remain as unchanged as if only a genius could recognize another genius, but a lot more people would be able to recognize them as genii. So, if it's recognition as a genius that one values, then being a genius would have limited value if only the genii could recognize one other. If A.P.'s statement had not been a joke, then it was at least a bit of a paradox, for the 'genii' of the second sentence were not really meant to be genii at all, but rather only functional enough to recognize genius in others. A.P. praised Lenin's 'genius' only to the extent that quotes or misquotes of Lenin could be used to glorify De Leon. The only statement about genius that I have not forgotten is: "The essence of genius is the search for the truth." And searching for truth is something that any person can do. In A.P.'s next chapter, he finally wrote something that made sense, and in my early Party involvement there was enough sense in what I saw in the SLP to attract me to it. A.P. continued (pp. 18-20):p. 18:"Marxian Fundamentals. "In order properly to estimate the importance of De Leon's contribution to Marxian science it becomes necessary here to review briefly the essence of Marxism as it was formulated by Marx with the aid of his co-worker, Frederick Engels. "First, The Extraction of Surplus Value. Marxism demonstrates that under capitalism the worker, as the sole producer of social wealth, is robbed of the major portion of the product of his labor. The social means of production (themselves representing past and accumulated labor) being privately owned, and the worker possessing nothing but his labor power, that is, his ability to perform some useful productive function, he is compelled to sell that labor power to the private owner of the means of production. That which he receives in the form of wages is, normally, equivalent to the value of his labor power. If it takes one and a half hours to produce his own value, i.e., sufficient food, shelter and clothing, etc., for one day, and if the working day is nine hours, it follows that the value produced in excess of the value of his own labor power would constitute five-sixths of the total produced by him. Or, to put it in another way, in order to be allowed to work for the capitalist owner of the tools, he must produce six times his own value. Or, finally, he receives but one-sixth of the wealth produced by him. The five-sixths goes to the capitalist class and is called surplus value. The surplus value (taking the sum total produced by the working class) is divided into interest, profit, rent, and once appropriated by the capitalist class it is expended in reinvestment, in riotous living, graft, taxes, etc., etc. Apart from the extraction of surplus value, the important points to be noted in this connection are the fact of the working class reproducing itself as such, the permanent existence of wage labor being an indispensable condition for the maintenance of capitalism; the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands; the impelling need of disposing of the surplus products in foreign markets, the home market (in the given circumstances) being unable to absorb them, with the consequent elimination of these foreign markets in the measure that they in turn develop as capitalist commodity-producing nations." This wasn't a bad explanation of the basic mechanism of the extraction of surplus value, a fundamental feature of capitalism. Many years ago, a casual aquaintance quoted leftistscuttlebutt to the effect that: 'If a radical would like to learn about capitalist economics, then go to the SLP; but, to learn about politics, go to some other party.' At the time, however, I had no idea of what implications that statement could have included. In Engels' 1892 "Preface to the English Edition" of "The Condition of the Working Class in England", Engels described the basic economic process of capitalist exploitation in his own words (Progress Publishers, 1973, pp. 27-8): ... "And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances {petty thefts upon the workpeople}, but in the capitalistic system itself. The wage-worker sells to the capitalist his labour-force for a certain daily sum. After a few hours' work he has reproduced the value of that sum; but the substance of his contract is, that he has to work another series of hours to complete his working-day; and the value he produces during these additional hours of surplus labour is surplus value, which costs the capitalist nothing, but yet goes into his pocket. That is the basis of the system which tends more and more to split up civilised society into a few Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, the owners of all the means of production and subsistence, on the one hand, and an immense number of wage-workers, the owners of nothing but their labour-force, on the other. And that this result is caused, not by this or that secondary grievance, but by the system itself - this fact has been brought out in bold relief by the development of Capitalism in England since 1847." In a letter to Sombart in March of 1895, Engels wrote that the the value of commodities in modern capitalist society was considerably more more difficult to determine than in previous history (MESC, p. 456): "When commodity exchange began, when products gradually turned into commodities, they were exchanged approximately according to their value. It was the amount of labour expended on two objects which provided the only standard for their quantitative comparison. Thus value had a direct and real existence at that time. We know that this direct realisation of value in exchange ceased and that now it no longer happens. And I believe that it won't be particularly difficult for you to trace the intermediate links, at least in general outline, that lead from directly real value to the value of the capitalist mode of production, which is so thoroughly hidden that our economists can calmly deny its existence. A genuinely historical exposition of these processes, which does of course require thorough research but in return promises amply rewarding results, would be a very valuable supplement to {Karl Marx's}Kapital." According to a Progress Publishers Note, Engels' Supplement to the Third Volume of Capital explored that very topic. Complications included the increasing use of machinery at the various stages in production from raw materials to final product, the replacement of barter by money as a medium of exchange, the intervention by merchants into the process of production, and inequalities of rates of profit at various stages of productive capacity, to name a few. Auto repair is one part of the service industry in which the rate of exploitation can sometimes easily be determined. After leaving the SLP in 1977, I worked for a small auto repair shop for nearly two years. At the end of that job, my nominal pay had moved up to $7.50 per hour, whereas the shop's labor rate was $25.00 per hour. A typical hour of my labor netted me around $5.25 after taxes and deductions, while, provided I didn't mess up the jobs too badly, the owner took home $17.50, minus a few dollars worth of expenses such as taxes, insurance, uniform cleaning, depreciation, etc. Thus, for every dollar that I took home, the owner took home two to three times as much as I did - not on the labor that he did, but on the labor that I did. And that didn't count the profit on the parts that I installed, which was no trivial amount. In "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", Engels thought that exploitation of labor would end sometime after the revolution (MESW III, pp. 149-50): "The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties - this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here. "With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." According to Engels, the way to overcome exploitation was by taking away the property of the rich, and to put it all in the hands of a worker's state. But, for Engels, expropriation was merely the means to the greater end of 'full participation in the economy', as explained in his 1877 short biography entitled "Karl Marx" (MESW 3, pp. 85-6): ... "that historical leadership has passed to the proletariat, a class which, owing to its whole position in society, can only free itself by abolishing altogether all class rule, all servitude and all exploitation; and that the social productive forces, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, are only waiting for the associated proletariat to take possession of them in order to bring about a state of things in which every member of society will be enabled to participate not only in production but also in the distribution and administration of social wealth, and which so increases the social productive forces and their yield by planned operation of the whole of production that the satisfaction of all reasonable needs will be assured to everyone in an ever-increasing measure." Nowadays, this higher motivation behind socialism seems completely forgotten. When confronted with this quote, activists usually either deny it completely, or else have nothing to say, which in itself is a sad commentary on the current condition of activism. A.P. continued with some more useful information (pp. 19-20): "Second, The Materialist Conception of History (and the Class Struggle), which reduces itself to the proposition that "in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat - cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class - the bourgeoisie - without, at the same time, and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles."" Back in my first study class, so taken was I by that passage, an exact replica of which appears in Engels' "Preface to the 1888 English edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party" (MECW 26.517), that I couldn't stop myself from memorizing it. A decade previous, back in my college days, ordinary treatments of economics and history were so dreadful that they were the only subjects that I ever came close to flunking or actually flunked. They seemed such a mass of unconnected names, dates, and events to be memorized, that my eyes glazed over. I had been running out of motivation in college anyway, and the least tasteful subjects were the ones whose study I abandoned first. I never thought for as long as I lived that I would ever again find those subjects interesting, but Marx's treatments of history surprised me by changing my attitude. In his August 1890 letter to Schmidt, Engels complained about some writers turning 'the materialist conception of history' into a mere phrase (MESC, pp. 393-4): ... "The materialist conception of history has a lot of dangerous friends nowadays, who use it as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late seventies used to say: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist."" ... "In general, the word "materialist" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the Hegelian manner. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined in detail before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now very little has been done in this respect because only a few people have got down to it seriously. We need a great deal of help in this field, for it is immensely big, and anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge - for economic history is still in its swaddling clothes! - constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then fancy that they have achieved something tremendous. "The self-conceit of the journalist must therefore accomplish everything and the result looks like it. It often seems as if these gentlemen think anything is good enough for the workers. If these gentlemen only knew that Marx thought his best things were still not good enough for the workers, and that he considered it a crime to offer the workers anything but the very best!" ... A.P. continued (p. 20): "Third, The Emancipation of the Working Class. Here, in the language of Marx and Engels, it is postulated that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself," by which is meant that only through classconscious efforts of the working class, expended through independent working class organizations, political and economic, will the working class be able to free itself from the fetters of wage slavery." Though Marx and Engels certainly favored independent economic and political movements for workers, their independence was supposed to be from bourgeois parties and movements, but not from one another, though, in this particular instance, it wasn't made clear as to which kind of independence A.P. alluded. In the present excerpt, A.P. chose to stress the organization of the working class into economic movements, and no particular argument in favor of their separation from political movements was put forth. But, in our upcoming analysis of the Hamann quote, A.P. made it abundantly clear that he intended for working class political and economic movements to be separate from one another, and other material indicates that both politics and the state were considered 'realms of bourgeois activities', and were not fit for workers to bother themselves with, except to abolish. In the next chapter of A.P.'spamphlet, the sentence beginning with 'Independent political action' laudably seems to have implied independence from bourgeois influence (pp. 20-21):p. 20:"Tactical Questions. "These were the Marxian principles which De Leon accepted when he commenced to take an active part in the Socialist and labor movement in this country. With his keen, analytical mind, he applied these principles to the conditions at hand, and accepted the full logic of the premises. But in doing so he ran foul of all the furies that are released under private property systems, and particularly the capitalist system, when one begins to act contrary to the life principle of such systems. Successively he struggled with the difficulties encountered, providing for the shortcomings in the movement as they were revealed to him. It would take us too far afield to go into these this afternoon. Besides, important as were these tactical questions they were still merely incidental to the main question which was looming up before De Leon's searching mind, the question of the instrumentality through which the working class might successfully effect its emancipation, and consolidate into permanent social institutions the fruits of the revolutionary struggle. The struggles involved in the important tactical questions that De Leon had to deal with were indeed essential to the unfolding of his genius, for subsidiary as were these questions to that one question of superior importance, the roadto that question inescapably led through each and every one of them. Independent political action - the cutting of the bourgeois navel string that bound the working class to the old order - was essential. Party ownership of the press was essential, for, no press, no party, and a privately owned press meant a privately owned party, which, of course, meant no party at all." Engels wrote a little about party tactics and party independence in his September 1892 letter to Kautsky (MESC, p. 422): ... "In our tactics one thing is firmly established for all modern countries and times: to convince the workers of the necessity of forming their own independent party, opposed to all bourgeois parties." ... In a December 1889 draft of a letter to Gerson Trier, Engels wrote about the independence of the workers' party from the bourgeoisie, and about collaboration with other parties (MESC, pp. 386-7): "You reject on principle any and every collaboration, even the most transient, with other parties. I am enough of a revolutionary not to renounce even this means if in the given circumstances it is more advantageous or at least less harmful. ... "We are agreed on this: that the proletariat cannot conquer political power, the only door to the new society, without violent revolution. For the proletariat to be strong enough to win on the decisive day it must - and Marx and I have advocated this ever since 1847 - form a separate party distinct from all others and opposed to them, a conscious class party. "But that does not mean that this party cannot at certain moments use other parties for its purposes. Nor does this mean that it cannot temporarily support the measures of other parties if these measures either are directly advantageous to the proletariat or progressive as regards economic development or political freedom. I would support anyone waging a real struggle in Germany for the abolition of primogeniture {the exclusive right of the eldest son to inherit property} and other feudal survivals, the bureaucracy, protective tariffs, the Anti-Socialist Law, and restrictions on the right of assembly and of association. If our German Progressive Party or your Danish Venstre were real radical-bourgeois parties and did not simply consist of wretched windbags who take to the bushes at the first threat of a Bismarck or Estrup, I would by no means be unconditionally opposed to any and every temporary collaboration with them for definite purposes. It is also collaboration when our deputies cast their votes for a proposal which was submitted by another party - and they have to do that often enough. But I am for this only if the advantage to us is direct or if the historical development of the country in the direction of the economic and political revolution is indisputable and worth while; and provided that the proletarian class character of the Party is not jeopardised thereby. For me this is the absolute limit. You can find this policy set forth as early as 1847 in the Communist Manifesto; we pursued it in 1848, in the International, everywhere. ... From the German edition of the Collected Works, the next paragraphs in the same letter went on to state (MEW 37, p. 327): ... "Aside from the question of morality - this is not the point here, so I leave it aside - I, as a revolutionary, approve of any means that lead to success, the most violent but also the apparently most peaceful ones. "Such a policy demands insight and character, but which other policy doesn't? It exposes us to the danger of corruption, the anarchists and friend Morrison say. Yes, if the working class is a bunch of idiots and weaklings and easily corruptible blackguards we better close up shop right away, then the proletariat and we all have no business in the political arena. The proletariat, like all other parties, becomes smart most likely through the consequences of its own mistakes; nobody can quite save them from these mistakes. "In my opinion, therefore, you are wrong if you raise a primarily purely tactical question to a matter of principle. And for me this is fundamentally only a tactical question. But a tactical mistake can under certain circumstances also end in a break of principle. "And there you have proceeded correctly, as far as I can judge, against the tactic of the Hovedbestyrelsen {Supervising Committee}. For years the Danish Left has played an unworthy opposition comedy and never tires to state to the world, again and again, its own powerlessness. It has long since passed up the opportunity to chastise the violation of the constitution with weapon in hand - if that opportunity ever existed - and it seems that a growing number of these Leftists are longing for reconciliation with Estrup. With such a party, it seems to me, a real proletarian party can under no circumstances associate without losing, in the long run, its own class character as a Labor Party. Therefore, as far as you, in contrast to these politics, emphasize the class character of the movement, I can only agree with you." A historical note regarding 'Party ownership of the press': As part of the big move to Palo Alto in 1974, the SLP sold off its heavy old printing press machinery and equipment that had been used in New York, so it newly contracted with West Coast professionals for printing new editions of the People, Party leaflets, pamphlets, NEC reports, etc. In spite of an obvious violation of what had once seemed like a Party principle, printing SLP literature outside of Party premises lost its old importance. Back in the days before cheap and accurate publishing, when not all groups could own their own press, or otherwise could not exercise full control over what was published, annoying mistakes often found their way into print, and many views were misrepresented, as the 1860's experiences of the First International with the "Beehive" and other periodicals demonstrated. Thanks to advances in technology, word processing, desktop publishing, etc., imparting ideas accurately is a lot less of a problem for various groups today.Taxes! A.P. continued (p. 21): "The question of taxation was important. To expose the absurdity of the claim that the working class was paying the taxes was to render the movement immune to the reform snares of the petty bourgeoisie. If the working class could be convinced that it was a tax-paying class, it could be shown to have interests in common with the capitalist class. "Taxes!" exclaims Frederick Engels. "A matter, to the bourgeoisie of deep, to the workingmen, however, of very slight concern. That which the workingmen pay in taxes goes, in the long run, into the value of labor power, and, accordingly, must be borne by the capitalists."" That the working and capitalist classes have long had interests in common might have come as a surprise to A.P., who might have forgotten that both classes wanted to replace feudal monarchies with democracies, which shows that they have had at least some political interests in common. In his 1875 "Critique of the Gotha Program", Marx defined taxes (MESW III, p. 27): "Taxes are the economic basis of the government machinery and of nothing else." A.P. took Engels' quote about taxes from near the end of Part One of "The Housing Question", and essentially conveyed its message intact. In his book, Engels had engaged in a vigorous refutation of the writings of the Proudhonist Mülberger. "Taxes!" was a part of a diatribe which included "Credit!", "State debts!", and "Private debts!". Engels' explained (MESW II, p. 323): "All these things which are held up to us here as highly important questions for the working class are in reality of essential interest only to the bourgeois, and still more so to the petty-bourgeois; and, despite Proudhon, we maintain that the working class is not called upon to safeguard the interests of these classes." Was Engels' little blurb the final word on taxes according to Marx, Lenin, and even Engels himself? A closer look at their writings will reveal a deeper perspective. All three looked upon heavy taxation for the lower classes as unjust, and fought for their right to be free of them. Marx wrote leaflets and articles to encourage the oppressed to boycott support of the German monarchy during the revolutions of 1848. A series of short articles appeared in the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung", which included the following text (from "Karl Marx on Revolution", Edited by Saul K. Padover, McGraw-Hill, 1971, pp. 452-5):"We Refuse to Pay Taxes{excerpt, p. 452} "There is only one way to defeat the monarchy ... "The monarchy not only defies the nation, it defies the citizens. "Let us, therefore, defeat it in a citizen's way. "And how does one defeat the monarchy in a citizen's way? "By starving it out. "And how does one starve it out? "By refusing to pay taxes.""The Ministry Under Indictment{excerpt, pp. 453-4} "A hunger cure would teach these officials the power of the citizens and make them good citizens themselves. "Starve the enemy and refuse to pay taxes! Nothing is more foolish than to provide a high-treason government with the means for a fight against the nation, and the means of all means is - money.""No More Taxes!{excerpt, p. 455} "The National Assembly was once again driven out of the Kollnische {Cologne} City Hall by armed force. It then moved to the Mielenz Hotel, where in the end, with 226 votes, it unanimously adopted the following resolution on tax avoidance: ""THE BRANDENBURG MINISTRY IS NOT AUTHORIZED TO DISPOSE OF GOVERNMENT MONEYS OR TO COLLECT TAXES, SO LONG AS THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IN BERLIN CANNOT CONTINUE ITS SESSIONS FREELY. ""THIS DECISION GOES INTO EFFECT ON NOVEMBER 17. ""THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF NOVEMBER 15." "FROM THIS DAY ON, ALL TAXES ARE THEREFORE SUSPENDED! ! ! TAXPAYING IS HIGH TREASON, TAX AVOIDANCE IS THE FIRST DUTY OF THE CITIZEN!" In "The Class Struggles in France", Marx exposed the detrimental effects of high taxes on the lives of the peasants (MESW I, pp. 276-7): "The condition of the French peasants, when the republic had added new burdens to their old ones, is comprehensible. It can be seen that their exploitation differs only in form from the exploitation of the industrial proletariat. The exploiter is the same: capital. The individual capitalists exploit the individual peasants through mortgages and usury; the capitalist class exploits the peasant class through the state taxes. The peasant's title to property is the talisman by which capital held him hitherto under its spell, the pretext under which it set him against the industrial proletariat. Only the fall of capital can raise the peasant; only an anti-capitalist, a proletarian government can break his economic misery, his social degradation. Theconstituent republic is the dictatorship of his united exploiters; the social-democratic, the Red republic, is the dictatorship of his allies." In his 1852 "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", Marx wrote of the relation of heavy taxes to the executive branch of government (MESW I, p. 482): ... "Besides the mortgage which capital imposes on it, the small holding is burdened by taxes. Taxes are the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army, the priests and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical." In his 1866 "Instructions for Delegates of the Provisional General Council" of the First International Workingmen's Association, Marx wrote what seems to have been some principles of working-class policy towards taxes (MESW II, pp. 83-4): "7. Direct and Indirect Taxation "(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital. "(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. "Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment; "Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government." Indirect taxes are taxes like sales taxes, value-added taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes on commodities. Direct taxes, on the other hand, are taxes on income, property, gifts, inheritance, etc. On the relations between the national debt, taxes, and the expropriation of the lower classes, Marx wrote in Part VIII of "Capital" (MESW II, p. 138): ... "As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the taxpayers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Over-taxation is not an incident, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot De Witt, has in his "Maxims" extolled it as the best system for making the wage-labourer submissive, frugal, industrious, and overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it exercises on the condition of the wage-labourer concerns us less however, here, than the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of the lower middle class. On this there are not two opinions, even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating efficacy is still further heightened by the system of protection, which forms one of its integral parts. "The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system corresponding with it, has played in the capitalisation of wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek in this, incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the modern peoples." ... In his 1884 "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", Engels contrasted a more modern system of taxation with the absence of taxation in gentile society (MESW III, pp. 327-8): "This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing. It may be very insignificant, almost infinitesimal, in societies where class antagonisms are still undeveloped and in out-of-the-way places as was the case at certain times and in certain regions in the United States of America. It [the public power] grows stronger, however, in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become larger and more populous. We have only to look at our present-day Europe, where class struggle and rivalry in conquest have tuned up the public power to such a pitch that it threatens to swallow the whole of society and even the state. "In order to maintain this public power, contributions from the citizens become necessary - taxes. These were absolutely unknown in gentile society; but we know enough about them today. As civilization advances, these taxes become inadequate; the state makes drafts on the future, contracts loans, public debts. Old Europe can tell a tale about these, too. "Having public power and the right to levy taxes, the officials now stand, as organs of society, above society. The free, voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs of the gentile [clan] constitution does not satisfy them, even if they could gain it; being the vehicles of a power that is becoming alien to society, respect for them must be enforced by means of exceptional laws by virtue of which they enjoy special sanctity and inviolability. The shabbiest police servant in the civilised state has more "authority" than all the organs of gentile society put together; but the most powerful prince and the greatest statesman, or general, of civilisation may well envy the humblest gentile chief for the unstrained and undisputed respect that is paid to him." The destructive effects of taxes on the lower classes were also well known to Lenin, who suggested in his 1916 article "Tasks of the Left Zimmerwaldists in the Swiss Social-Democratic Party" that demands for high rates for the rich and exemption for the lower classes be incorporated into party platforms (LCW 23, pp. 140-1): "11. Social-Democrats must propagate as widely as possible among the masses the urgent necessity of introducing a uniform federal property and income tax, with high and progressive scales ... "12. Social-Democrats must ruthlessly combat the bourgeois lie, spread also by many opportunists in the Social-Democratic Party, that it is "impractical" to advocate revolutionary-high rates of property and income taxation. ... "The larger the section of people we convince of the justice of revolutionary-high taxation rates and of the need to fight to secure such rates, the sooner will the bourgeoisie make concessions. And we will utilise every concession, however small, in the unswerving struggle for the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie." In "The Founding of the Communist International", written in 1919, Lenin wrote (LCW 28, p. 485): "We seek no agreement with the bourgeoisie, we are marching to the final and decisive battle against them. But we know that after the ordeal, agony and distress of the war, when the people throughout the world are fighting for demobilisation, when they feel they have been betrayed and appreciate how incredibly heavy the burden of taxation is that has been placed upon them by the capitalists who killed tens of millions of people to decide who would receive more of the profits - we know that these brigands' rule is at an end!" The founders of socialism didn't live in the days of the computer, with its means of tracking people from cradle to grave, taxing workers in such exacting ways that many barely earn thevalue of their labor power, and in many cases, less. But, now that the computer is used as a means of class oppression, still we are assured by the SLP that taxes should no more matter to us than the weather. Their official position on taxes has probably not changed since A.P. wrote his pamphlet in 1931. It's hard to think of a place where 'the movement' was rendered 'immune to the reform snares of the petty bourgeoisie'. In the USA, where reformism has been part of our way of life for a long time, no ideology but bourgeois ideology hardly exists for the mass of rich and poor alike, and as well for opportunists who make businesses out of (mis)leading would-be revolutionaries. Does the working class pay any taxes? When they drive to the gas station on the way to work and fill up their tanks, do they not pay fuel taxes? When their vehicle wears out and they have to buy another, do they not pay sales taxes, and on nearly everything else they buy as well? If they are lucky enough not to have to rent their abodes, do they not pay property taxes? And when they get their pay checks, do they not find already deducted their so-called income taxes? Both Federal and State? Plus FICA (Social Security)? And others, such asexcise taxes? Workers pay many types of taxes nowadays, so it is absurd to say that 'workers don't pay taxes.' Would anyone in their right minds want to seriously try to convince workers that they are not taxpayers? Many years ago, while a new member, I used to try to convince 'the man on the street' to that effect, and all I ever succeeded in doing was in discrediting myself and earning ridicule. As much as I tried to explain that they were receiving the value of their labor power, and that they were being compensated for the taxes that they were merely passing on to the government, I could get no one to listen to me after positing that argument, even if the argument was technically permissible. It was almost as though average people only needed to listen to a member try to convince them that they were not paying taxes to prove to themselves that the SLP was irrelevant. Maybe the theory that the SLP was working on was that those who could see its logic, and who could accept the theory willingly, thus passed a crucial test of suitability for SLP membership. Was the proposition that 'the working class pays taxes' a simple absurdity? When A.P. wrote his pamphlet in 1931, some of the above taxes were non-existent, and others less burdensome than they have become today. But, by the time A.P. met his maker, taxes had become a considerable burden to workers. The SLP, if it had at all been interested in being anything but a fan club for De Leon, could have updated its literature to account for changes and trends in the extraction of surplus value from labor. Why not simplify matters by saying that 'if people take money out of their pockets to give to the government, directly or indirectly, then that person pays taxes', simply as an obvious, face-value transaction, even though an economist could come along, analyze the flow of money, and say that the employer pays workers enough extra money to pay their taxes. In the same way, the argument could be made that workers don't really pay their rent if their bosses give them enough extra to pass on to their landlords. If, on the other hand, the SLP could convince workers that they are not paying taxes, and that therefore 'the middle and upper classes are really paying all of the taxes', it would then make the government appear like a purely capitalist institution that workers should not think twice about abolishing. That was the hidden anarchist agenda. Make the government appear as though it is a purely bourgeois institution and has no redeeming value whatsoever to workers, and the chances of workers abolishing the state are enhanced by a part in a zillion. Another way of looking at the 'who pays the taxes' question is to say that the producing classes create wealth. They keep part of the wealth they create, another part goes to their employers, and another part is siphoned off in the form of taxes. So, who pays the taxes? Who else but the producing classes? For anyone to claim that it is a matter of little concern for the producers as to how much they pay, where it goes, and how it's used, cannot have much faith in democratic republics.Reform or Revolution? A.P. went on to present the Party perspective on the question of reform (pp. 21-2): "The question of reform or revolution was important in the same sense that the taxation question was important, for so long as the workers were doped with the opium of reform, no class view, and still less revolutionary action could be thought of. It has been well said that reform is a compromise with the past. At any rate, the reform road leads back and never forward." This uncompromising stance reveals the SLP conviction that 'no reform could ever be worth fighting for', and that 'nothing less than the Party's own version of out-and-out revolution is worth anything'. This stance clearly contradicts the Party's early advocacy of reforms, such as the eight hour day and reductions in the length of the working day commensurate with the march of technology, as documented in the Workmen's Advocate (see Appendix 2). The modern hard-line position has a certain appeal to some (like myself at one time) who are so alienated that nothing less than a complete change in society would be acceptable. There is a desperation to this aspiration to elevate society to the highest stage possible on an immediate time-table. Consistent with the factor of isolation, combined with the need for uncompromising revolution, is the impatience with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, as a mere transition to classless, stateless society, fails to satisfy cravings for a truly immediate new basis for relations between people. No compromise! No trimming or trading! Except with the truth. As to parties that reject reform as a matter of principle, Lenin, in an article entitled "Two Paths", wrote in May of 1914 (LCW 20, p. 308): ... "If there were a group that denied the use of reforms and partial improvements, we could not join it, because that would be a non-Marxist policy, a policy harmful to the workers." In September of 1913, Lenin wrote a small article entitled: "Marxism and Reformism", the first paragraph of which states (LCW 19, p. 372): "Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognise struggle for reforms, i.e., for measures that improve the conditions of the working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists, who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms. Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital." ... Lenin's first sentence is one more circumstantial confirmation of the anarchist nature of the SLP, a Party that has been unwilling to fight for the smaller gains that can sometimes be wrested from governments. In democracies, the only progressive agenda items are reforms to ease the lot of the workers. Due to ongoing world-wide democratization, the old opportunities of 'socialists helping replace monarchies with democracies, and further developing those democracies into a wide-spread proletarian dictatorship' have forever ended. Because ameliorative reforms make workers less likely to rebel, anarchists find reforms intolerable. To them, only a suffering proletariat has the motivation to revolt, so any reform that reduces the pressure cooker of oppression must be fought against. But, it's probably easier for middle-class anarchists to prosper without reforms than it is for average workers. In his 1916 "Open Letter to Charles Naine, member of the International Socialist Committee in Berne", Lenin wrote that in a revolutionary situation, such as during a world war ... (LCW 23, p. 224): ... "Who does not know that we Social-Democrats are not against the struggle for reforms, that, unlike the social-patriots, unlike the opportunists and reformists, we do not confine ourselves to the struggle for reforms, but subordinate it to the struggle for revolution?" ... For Lenin, further developing the Social-Democratic revolution into proletarian dictatorship was plausible in Russia in 1917, when taking state power was of the highest priority for his party. At the same time, Lenin attempted to drum up support for overturning capitalist rule in Western democracies, which proved unfeasible, as every other revolution near Russia's border was reversed.Union Questions A.P. continued (p. 22): "These and numerous subsidiary tactical questions were important enough, and each had to be settled as the road was being cleared. But the one thing that De Leon recognized above all other things was the need of an aggressive, economic organization of labor. {1} The labor unions that he found were either decadent, or they were, as he put it in the adopted phrase, bulwarks of capital against Socialism. {2} In his immortal address, "Two Pages from Roman History," De Leon has portrayed the "labor leader," or the labor lieutenant of the capitalist class, in his true colors. The analogy he draws here between the ancient Roman plebs leader and the modern labor faker is a stroke of genius." Taking the most important points one by one:1 ... 'the need of an aggressive, economic organization of labor.' This anarchist theme was repeated over and over, and while the organization of workers into unions is not to be argued with, the Party ignored political organizing for the most part, except to fulfill the anarchist mission of abolishing parties, politics and government. A recent article in an engineering trade magazine projected that all human physical labor will end by 2086, all of it to be displaced by robots and automation (if we don't first completely ruin the environment, or annihilate ourselves in Armageddon). Others forecast the end of work by 2050, and others by 2029. If workers are soon not going to have an 'economy' to participate in, they might want to consider uniting into 'an aggressive, political organization of labor' in order to protect their class interests, and reduce the length of the working day to distribute what little work that is left for people to do among all who could use a little work to get by. Economic organizations, by and large, are characterized by preoccupation with issues around wages, benefits, working conditions, etc., and are mostly for those who already have jobs. Unions generally leave it to government to provide for those who can't find work. Apolitical organization to fight for the interests of the whole working class will soon be the order of the day, as presaged by recent remarks in the press about 'the rapid progress of technology'.2 'The labor unions ... were either decadent, or ... bulwarks of capital against Socialism.' Though socialism a century ago might have been a more popular word than it is today, it was dead wrong to portray unions as 'bulwarks of capital against Socialism', for, capitalism in this country has never been threatened with revolutionary socialism. The ascendancy of the republican form of bourgeois rule extinguished the possibility of playing out the old Marxistscenario of simultaneous revolutions in the most advanced countries, especially after Europe failed to follow Russia's example with similarly long-lasting revolutions. To have labeled unions as 'bulwarks of capital' was also tantamount to a slanderous attack on workers. Unions have always been organizations of working people, and if they didn't answer the needs of workers, they would not have fought to create them, keep them in operation, and continually elect leaders from among their own ranks. In a country and world in which many workers suffer from lousy pay, benefits and working conditions, they have plenty of need for organizations to try to protect what's left of their standards of living. During theDepression of the 1930's, organized labor wanted work to be shared by means of a 30-hour week, and the corresponding Black-Connery Bill was opposed by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and was eventually defeated after being passed by the Senate. A.P. continued his chapter with (p. 22): "To supply the proletariat with a union thoroughly imbued with a class spirit the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was launched. The S.T. and L.A. was a tremendous step forward, but it still did not fully answer the question: How to insure success of the revolution and provide the new social system with governmental machinery suited to its needs and purposes? By 1904 De Leon had all but solved the question - intellectually. But before going further it becomes necessary to retrace our steps." 'Supplying the proletariat with a union thoroughly imbued with a class spirit' was presented as the De Leonist solution to the labor-faker problem. A.P.'s choice of words almost made it sound as though an enterprising individual or group could make a business of supplying unions to workers, turning Hamann's theory of 'only the trade union can set on foot the true political party of labor' on its head. What people at that time got was the exact opposite of Hamann's theory, as the SLP set on foot a labor union known as the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. In "'Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder", Lenin criticized the deviant behavior of (LCW 31, pp. 54): ... "refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are "reactionary", and invent a brand-new, immaculate little "Workers' Union", which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins" ... Was the ST & LA the proletarian solution to the 'problem' of existing trade unions? Did the proletariat flock to a union that was 'pure and free from all corrupting influences'? The record shows that the ST & LA never really caught on. It might have been an interesting experience for those who were not already organized in other unions, but, in order for workers to be able to afford to abandon their old trade unions, it probably helped to also be able to afford to go out and do whatever else they wanted, an option not open to very many in the producing classes. On the other hand, Lenin suggested working within existing unions, or 'boring from within', a policy that was very much frowned upon by the Party leadership after their experiences with the Knights of Labor and the AF of L. A utopian theme was repeated as well, and the answer as to 'who or what' was going to 'provide the new social system with governmental machinery' was introduced a few pages later in A.P.'s pamphlet: The SLP will supposedly provide us with the form of administration, and all that the workers have to do is buy and implement it. A.P. continued with a new chapter (pp. 22-4):p. 22:"Essential Lack in Socialist Thought. "What was the one thing that was lacking in Socialist thought, to use Lenin's phrase? {1} The answer is: The form under which could be worked out the economic emancipation of labor in a fully developed capitalist country. {2} The standard formula, as stated in the "Communist Manifesto," and as restated with minor variations by Socialists everywhere before De Leon, declared that: ""The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible ." ("Communist Manifesto.")" This alleged 'standard formula' that A.P. excerpted looks like what Marx wrote, and the SLP edition of the "Communist Manifesto" seems to agree nearly perfectly with the Progress Publishers edition. The clause that dealt with 'quickly increasing the total of productive forces' was the only clause A.P. italicized, so perhaps he thought that 'it was the only important point.' For an anarchist, perhaps it was, but it wasn't emphasized, repeated or italicized in the original, and neither were a lot of other things that A.P. emphasized. Observe in the first sentence of the alleged 'standard formula', that the economic system of capitalism was to continue to function after the revolution, as capital was to be wrested from the bourgeoisie only by slow degrees. If capitalism was to continue after the revolution, then wage labor, exploitation of producing classes, etc., would also continue after the revolution, so anarchists especially might wonder 'what good is this Marxist revolution, anyway?' And this is the point: In the Marxist scenario, the only thing that was to change dramatically was the class content of the state, going from bourgeois to proletarian after a fight, or, in other words, there was to be a dramatic political change. Now for economic change: If Marx and Engels knew of a magic socialist system for carrying on socialist production right after the revolution, surely they would have mentioned it in the context of their criticisms of the systems proposed by Bakunin and Becker, or somewhere else it could be accessed. In its absence, not to despair, for there may not be a better system than capitalism for diminishing the labor required to produce the commodities and services we all depend on, throwing the producing classes out on the street wholesale, creating the pressure to share the remaining work by reducing the length of the work week, and in the process of us equitably sharing work while reducing labor time to zero, class distinctions would be abolished as well. The final goal of the movement for Marx and Engels was the abolition of capital, and the gradual reduction of the work week is an intelligent way to do just that. If, someday, no one is forced by economic necessity to go to work, then capitalism as we know it will be over and done with. R.I.P. A.P. left out a preliminary paragraph that contained an important part of the 'formula' (MESW I, p. 126): ... "We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy." Could making the working class into the ruling class be worth anything? Obviously, it would mean that the state continues to exist after the revolution. And if there is a state, then there must also exist classes and class oppression, and, if classes exist, then also parties that represent the interests of the different classes. And if the working class is to be supreme in the state, then it could only become supreme because the working class would have a party that represents its interests. Can 'winning the battle for democracy' be worth anything? To the working classes of Europe, dominated as they were by monarchies at the time of the "Communist Manifesto", winning the battle for democracy had a very high priority, whereas, in a democratic republic like the USA, the battle for democracy had already been won, though suffrage in the USA certainly needed to be made more inclusive, which it was, over time. If a big party still doesn't represent the interests of the workers here, it could mean that working Americans don't recognize their membership in an underclass, nor that we live in a class-divided society. But it's hard to blame workers, for Engels believed (as shown in the appendix) that the USA was the most bourgeois country in the world, where everyone could aspire to their own farm or business: "America is so purely bourgeois, has no feudal past at all, and is therefore proud of its purely bourgeois organization - and so they will get rid of the old traditional mental rubbish only through practical experience." But that was then, and it's hard to believe that there aren't enough poor people around now who could use better representation.1 "What was the one thing that was lacking in Socialist thought, to use Lenin's phrase?" Did what was 'lacking in Socialist thought' have anything to do with honesty? My search for a clue in the Indexes to Lenin's Collected Works was fruitless.2 "The answer is: The form under which could be worked out the economic emancipation of labor in a fully developed capitalist country." A.P.'s predictable answer certainly didn't resemble anything Lenin would have said on that matter. Why couldn't A.P. have provided a reference for 'Lenin's phrase' for us to look up? The most probable reason for the unfortunate lapse in documentation is that A.P. could not possibly have found a phrase of Lenin's that would have remotely supported A.P.'s theory of a missing economic form, unless he could have excerpted a phrase out of context. The lack of a form was not the problem confronting workers, as implied by Marx at the Hague Congress of the First International (MESW II, p. 292): ... "The worker will some day have to win political supremacy in order to organise labour along new lines." ... First things first: Marx believed that political supremacy would have to be won by workers before they could reorganize themselves to carry on production cooperatively, and that they shouldn't worry about the second step until they had completed the first, whereas the SLP puts it the other way around and requires the organization of labor into an unfamiliar form before workers are emancipated. And Marx's 'standard formula' extended to the most advanced countries of the world. The SLP, on the other hand, says: 'Reorganize labor into the economic form De Leon discovered, and the need for workers to use the political state after their victory will be eliminated.' Good luck. Not much in common with Marxism there, nor with the experience of the lower classes, which means that the workers won't do anything close to what the SLP wants them to do. Marx didn't propose workers do very much more than what they had already done for themselves, even if only in embryo. Though Marx criticized the Communards of Paris for not taking over the National Bank, and for not marching to Versailles to defeat the ruling class, he might have been wishing for more than what French workers were actually ready to do. His "The Civil War in France" mentioned workers compensating capitalists for the abandoned factories they took over during the Commune, indicating less communist sentiment among workers than what M+E would have liked. The republicanism that was sweeping through Europe might have been mistaken for the beginning of a world-wide proletarian revolution, which explains their optimism over developments in Russia, where the bourgeois revolution of 1917 further developed into at least a caricature of proletarian dictatorship in late 1917, echoing Marx's 1871 observation that 'middle class republics have become impossible in Europe'. The job of capitalism is far from over. Capitalism will be our economic system for decades more, at least until human labor gets completely replaced by machinery, and people are no longer forced by economic necessity to work for a living.A Fate for the State A.P. continued with his analysis of the state (p. 23): "More concisely, Engels later stated the problem as follows: ""By converting the large majority of the population more and more into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. By urging more and more the conversion of the large already socialized means of production into State property, it points the path for the accomplishment of this revolution. The proletariat seizes the machinery of the State and converts the means of production first into State property ." ("Socialism, Utopia to Science.")" Translation note: This terrible 'translation' does not seem to match even the standard SLP version of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science". What competent translator would write - "points the path"? So that Engels' thoughts can be better analyzed, here are some important paragraphs that preceded the portion A.P. chose to quote (MESW III, pp. 145-6): "But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution. "This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself. "Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action - and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders - so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. "But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and the electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production - on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment. "Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." Note the warning to the working class contained in the last paragraph: A propertyless class is being created that will be destroyed unless it seizes political power. A.P. continued (pp.23-4): "Discussing here the new conditions (as conceived by him) Engels continues: ""The first act wherein the State appears as the real representative of the whole body social - the seizure of the means of production in the name of society - is also its last independent act as a State. The interference of the State in social relations becomes superfluous in one domain after another, and falls of itself into desuetude; the place of a government over persons is taken by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production. [Emphases here mine.] The State is not 'abolished.' It dies out." ("Socialism, Utopia to Science.")" Like the previous extracts, both may have come from the infamous De Leon-Vogt pirate translation. The extracts also differ greatly from the authorized Aveling translation used in both the SLP and the Progress Publishers editions that were much easier to understand. Continuing from above, Engels wrote (MESW III, pp. 146-7): "But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state. That is, of an organisation of the particular class which was pro tempore the exploiting class, an organisation for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society - the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society - that is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished." It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free state," both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand." In a March 1875 letter to Bebel, in the context of a critique of the German Workers Party's new (Gotha) program, Engels included more thoughts about the scientific insufficiency of the term "free people's state", and further expounded on the differences between the capitalist state and the workers' state (MESW III, pp. 34-5): ... "Taken in its grammatical sense, a free state is one where the state is free in relation to its citizens, hence a state with a despotic government. The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The "people's state" has been thrown in our faces by the Anarchists to the point of disgust, although already Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free people's state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore propose to replace state everywhere by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very well convey the meaning of the French word "commune." Lenin added his own criticism of the "free people's state" in "The State and Revolution" (LCW 25, p. 403): "The "free people's state" was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. This catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to "justify" its use "for a time" from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also{a} failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a "special force" for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not "free" and not a "people's state"." Looking at some 'differences in translations', where Engels used "The proletariat seizes political power" ..., A.P. used "The proletariat seizes the machinery of the State" ... . While searching the library for the actual German words that could have been translated into 'the machinery of the State', I ran across Staatsgewalt, which Cassell's Dictionary translated into "supreme or executive power", which conceivably could be stretched into 'the machinery of the State', so I found this development to be puzzling. I then discovered that Engels' work originally had been written in 1880 as a series of articles in the French periodical La Revue socialiste, and that the authorized Aveling English translation didn't appear until 1892. So, whence the lousy translation? Appendix 1 includes an October 1891 complaint to Sorge about 'the American pirate edition with its miserable English'. Perhaps De Leon and Vogt of the SLP used the 1883 Germantranslation as the raw material for their translation, and translated from German into English, instead of from the original French into English, perhaps to beat the 1892 Aveling English edition into print. I wonder how many copies they sold, and how many royalties they cheated away from Engels. It looks like a stroke of De Leon's pure financial genius, and yet another chapter of less than glorious SLP history. Where A.P. quoted: 'The interference of the State ... falls of itself into desuetude', he could instead have used the much plainer "State interference ... dies out of itself", as Aveling used, but maybe the Party didn't have the rights to the authorized Aveling translation at that time. 'Desuetude', being a rather obscure word, sent me to the dictionary to see if it was a synonym for 'dying out', but it was only approximate. Here is the definition: "1: discontinuance from use, practice, exercise, or functioning ... 2: a state of protracted suspension or of apparent abandonment ... : outmoded or discarded status ..." Thus, 'Desuetude' sounds like something that was cut off from use or abandoned, rather than something that gradually decayed. The section dealing with the origin of the word says: "... akin to L suus one's own - more at SUICIDE ...". Well, it's no wonder that A.P. used the word 'desuetude', for the 'suicide of the state' is exactly what the anarchists would like for the state to commit, for then no anarchist would ever have to expend the energy to abolish it. A.P. continued (p. 24): "Here is projected a much clearer picture of the industrial commonwealth of labor than heretofore. First, the uselessness of the State as a means of directing production is clearly shown; secondly, it is made abundantly clear that the administration of the new society will be industrial instead of political. {1} The seeming inconsistencies (as, for example, that the first act of the State as a representative of the whole of society becomes at the same time its last act, while nevertheless the new "State" is shown to be functioning for quite some time) {2} are to be explained in the light of the conditions of the time. I shall return to that later." {3} Engels' theories of the state were similarly analyzed on page xi of A.P.'s 1947 Preface to the SLP edition of "Socialism: From Utopia to Science" (and were critiqued in Part C of this book), but A.P.'s present 'analysis' sufficiently differs from the aforementioned to merit a separate examination:1 ... 'it is made abundantly clear that the administration of the new society will be industrial instead of political.' While Engels' paragraphs spanned three historical epochs, from 1) capitalism through 2) the proletarian dictatorship, and on into 3) classless and stateless society, A.P. misconstrued Engels as indicating that: 'The capitalist era (1) is to be superseded directly by (3) classless, stateless society'. But, A.P. gave us no better than a phony version of Marxist societal evolution in which step 2) - the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e., the workers' state, the state which was to die out) - was omitted entirely. By consistently omitting the era of proletarian dictatorship, A.P.'s assertions of a non-political nature of post-revolutionary society could sound plausible to some, but Engels' text showed that the post-revolutionary administration was to be as markedly political as the pre-revolutionary, but with a proletarian, rather than a capitalist, class character.One or Two Stages of Socialism? One of the many ways in which the Party contradicts Marxism revolves around the number of stages of socialism (i.e., of post-revolutionary society), of which stages Marx enumerated at least two, but of which the SLP recognizes only an upper stage of classless and stateless society. A.P. asserted that 'technologically advanced countries, such as the USA, could aspire to classlessness and statelessness directly after capitalism.' But, Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program" described at least two stages of post-revolutionary society (MESW III, p. 26): "Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilised countries, in spite of their motley diversity of form, all have this in common, that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense it is possible to speak of the "present-day state", in contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off. "The question then arises: what transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word people with the word state. "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. "Now the programme does not deal with this nor with the future state of communist society." These words expressed the following ideas:1) The root of the present-day state is the bourgeois mode of production. Under proletarian rule, the state will dissolve.2) Between capitalist and communist society lies a transition period in which the state can only be the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx envisioned society as proceeding from capitalism to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and then to classless and stateless communism (aka the administration of things). If at least two distinct stages of post-revolutionary society were not predicted, Marx would not have enumerated two different techniques by which workers would be compensated (Ibid., p. 19): "Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal. "But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" After reading this, which honest person would argue against Marx having a vision of at least two phases of communism - 1) a lower stage of post-revolutionary society, and 2) a higher stage, after antitheses between classes, between mental and manual labor, and between town and country have been eliminated? But, A.P. took excerpts from the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin that described no more than the upper phase of communism, and used the quotes out of context to portray post-revolutionary society as if 'in technologically advanced countries, classless and stateless society would directly displace capitalist society.' Unaware readers might be led to believe that Marx, Engels and Lenin had advocated a program that amounts to anarchy, not understanding that neither anarchism nor communism had been defined by SLP leaders in a way in which more objective anarchists, socialists or communists had already understood those terms, nor that the SLP leaders re-labeled anarchy as 'socialism' for mass consumption. Nowadays, it's not unusual for parties with anarchist programs to call themselves socialist, because 'anarchist party' is a contradiction in terms.2 'The seeming inconsistencies (as, for example, that the first act of the State as a representative of the whole of society becomes at the same time its last act, while nevertheless the new "State" is shown to be functioning for quite some time)' ... Poor Engels! When he wrote his pamphlet in 1880, was he just a confused old man? Considering the 'seeming inconsistency' of the first act of the state also being its last act, and yet the state goes on functioning, Engels wrote that sentence in the same spirit that he wrote (MESW III, p. 146): "The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property. "But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state." If A.P. had wanted to complain about an inconsistency as seemingly paradoxical as 'The proletariat ... abolishes also the state as state', and yet the state goes on functioning, then it's a wonder why A.P. didn't also excerpt and complain about the equally remarkable 'The proletariat ... abolishes itself as proletariat'. It doesn't take too many smarts to figure out that Engels was describing a historical process in both cases, but instead we were being asked to aspire to an extremely low state of cognition and surmise that Engels contradicted himself within his same paragraph by suggesting that 'the abolition of the state would take place all at once, and yet the very same state would go on existing.' Using the same yardstick, if A.P. had wanted to voice as much concern over the proletariat abolishing itself as he did for the proletariat's alleged abolition of the state, perhaps he would have accused Engels of advocating the proletariat commit mass suicide, especially if that could have fit into A.P's anarchist schemes. Into that second little sentence, however, Engels compressed what he considered to be the future experience of billions of people over unknown quantities of time. The way in which the state was to be abolished 'as state' was, from the moment of the proletariat taking political power onward, class contradictions would begin to dissolve, the rich would lose their wealth, and the poor would lose their economic insecurity. Class distinctions would be abolished over time by means of working class policy in the state, by lawfully reducing hours of labor, thereby gradually bringing workers up to the same level of personal freedom as the rich. While abolishing class distinctions over the unspecified time period of the proletarian dictatorship, the state was to lose its political and class character while all members of society became equal in wealth, and as the administration of things increasingly replaced the class oppression functions of state. It was such a sweet dream. This revolutionary scenario was based on what Marx and Engels witnessed happening and developing in Europe, but their expectations failed to materialize. Now that democracies are facts of life in the technologically advanced countries, and modern communications makes it impossible for terror to reign without everyone knowing about it, the task of the day is to prepare for the abolition of class distinctions as though the lower classes could use the state as they see fit, if only they had a party they could call their own that would fight for their 'class-abolitionist' interests. In republics, reform alone will be the method for social change.3 'The seeming inconsistencies ... are to be explained in the conditions of the time. I shall return to that later.' Here A.P. may have cast doubt on his own analysis, as he qualified Engels' alleged inconsistencies as only seeming to be so. If, according to A.P., 'the state was, is, and always will be, acapitalist state', then the seeming inconsistencies of Engels' statement may have better been explained in light of psychiatric reports of the time, for, to have formulated the evolution of the state in the way A.P. tried to make Engels appear to have formulated it, Engels would have to have been off his rocker. Assuming that the followers of A.P. will not soon provide a better explanation than 'conditions', the following alternative explanation for the 'seeming inconsistencies' is humbly submitted: What the revolutionary classes would do after attaining political supremacy was fertile ground for a bit of speculation, even in the works of Marx and Engels. The "Communist Manifesto" mentioned 1) 'wresting all capital from the bourgeoisie by slow degrees'. "The Peasant Question in France and Germany" (1894), one of Engels' most mature works, provided two different plans: 2) 'expropriate the biggest owners of land and means of production'; and 3) 'the buy-out of the capitalist class'. Expropriation was the method used in the Soviet Union back in 1917, as described by Lenin in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (LCW 28, pp. 313-4): "On October 26, 1917, i.e., on the very first day of the proletarian, socialist revolution, private ownership of land was abolished in Russia." This amounted to a gigantic expropriation of the land-owning classes in the old Soviet Union, and the after-effects of that expropriation have been the subject of other books. Those effects could not have been very good, for we recently witnessed the replacement of their system of state ownership with private ownership. Though what the revolutionary classes would do after winning political supremacy was debatable, even in the works of Marx and Engels, everything that the revolutionary classes would ever want to dream about was dependent upon first winning political supremacy. Marx and Engels made that clear in the Communist Manifesto, repeated it in the First International, and repeated it over and over in various writings and correspondence, so it should be considered settled ancient theory.The Commune and the State So, what about the first act also being the last act, and yet the state goes on existing? After winning political supremacy, the workers' state was to become - not a state in the old sense of the word, as Engels explained in his 1875 letter to Bebel - but rather more like a Gemeinwesen, i.e., a Commune, as in 'Paris Commune'. And the Commune was to have the important function of making sure that the upper classes did not restore their rule during the transition period, when productive forces were building up to the point where 'the machines could run by themselves', i.e., no wage-slaves would someday be needed. As class distinctions were being abolished, the state would be dying out, as in 'an evolutionary process'. In spite of Engels' definition of the Commune as a dictatorship of the proletariat, A.P. didn't do much more than pick out bits and pieces of what Marx wrote about it, and try to make Marx's administration of things appear consistent with A.P.'s anarchist vision. A.P.'s analysis of the Commune commenced (pp. 24-6): "But Engels's statement marked an advance over previous attempts at outlining the functions of the State and the transition period, and this advance was due in a large measure to the Paris Commune of 1871. {1}p. 24:"The Passing of the State. "We are, most of us, familiar with Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune. In his famous work on the subject ("The Civil War in France") - at once profound and spirited - he returns again and again to the constitution of the Commune and its workings. This great historic event convinced Marx that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." {2} And he adds: "The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time." Here is embedded the germ of the great thought which De Leon was to work out completely thirty years later. By contrasting "working" with "parliamentary," Marx indicates that an entirely new governmental machine had to be evolved, one suited to the new social groundwork, in short, an administration of things, or an industrial administration. "It was [said Marx] essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form (at last discovered) under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor." {3} "What Marx here says is that the working class, upon securing or seizing power, must dismantle the Political (parliamentary) State while, on the one hand, it represses the opponents of the working class, and, on the other hand, gradually and as speedily as possible, increases "the total of productive forces." {4} While Marx clearly realized the true nature of the proletarian revolution, while he clearly saw that the proletariat, to use the forceful language of Lenin, must smash up the old State machinery, {5} he failed (or did not think it necessary at the time) to take into account the development of a situation much more radically different from the seventies than the seventies were from 1847. {6} For he, as well as Engels and his contemporaries, proceeded on the assumption that the victorious proletariat would have three main factors to deal with before instituting Socialism proper. First, a powerful and potent, though temporarily beaten, capitalist class; second, a numerically strong petty bourgeois and peasant element, with the actual proletariat everywhere in the minority; and third, an insufficient industrial development. {7} Throughout all the writings of Marx and Engels on this subject (and the same holds true of the writings of Lenin, who in industrially backward Russia largely faced the same situation generally prevailing at the time of the Paris Commune), Marx and Engels reverted to that three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success. {8} The transition period to them was not only a prolonged one, but one fraught with real dangers to the proletarian regime. Hence, their repeated insistence (especially since the Paris Commune) on the repressive features of the projected working class government, and their emphasis on the necessity of undisputed working class rule which they occasionally designated the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. {9} Because of the significance attached to this phrase since the Russian Revolution I want to emphasize here that the essence of this dictatorship (asunderstood by Marx and Engels) was: Exercise of supreme power by the proletariat, unconditional surrender of the capitalist class, with the rubbish of parliament, constituent assembly and what not, consigned to the museum of antiquities, as Engels put it. {10} I shall return to the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" later." Marx's "Civil War in France" is better known to readers of SLP literature as "The Paris Commune", which sounds a lot more idyllic, peaceful, classless, and stateless than a "Civil War in France" ever could. In his 'analysis' thereof, A.P. committed some of the more outrageous examples of fraud that have been analyzed in this book, interpreting snippets from Marx as indicating that: 'The anti-capitalist revolution will directly yield classless and stateless society, except in economically less developed countries, where the working class government will have to be repressive toward the middle classes and build up the productive forces during their transition to classless and stateless society.' Let's take a closer look before buying A.P.'sanalysis.1 'But Engels's statement marked an advance over previous attempts at outlining the functions of the State and the transition period' ... It would have been nice for A.P. to have elaborated on what those earlier attempts comprised, and in what manner they fell short, or at least to have given us the identities of their proponents, but again, we were given nothing of substance.2 "This great historic event convinced Marx that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." A.P. enjoyed using this quote to persuade us that 'Marx warned workers not to have anything to do with the state or state power.' Of the contrasts Marx drew between the institutions of the French Third Republic and those of the Commune, A.P. misconstrued those contrasts as between capitalist institutions and classless, stateless society. A.P. might have fooled quite a few people, but Engels' Jan. 1, 1884, letter to Bernstein illuminated the meaning of that phrase very well (me47.74): "It is simply a question of showing that the victorious proletariat must first reshape the old, bureaucratic, administratively centralised state machine before they can use it for their own purposes; whereas, since 1848, all bourgeois republicans, so long as they were in opposition, have heaped abuse on that machine but, no sooner in office, have taken it over intact and made use of it, partly against reaction but to an even greater extent against the proletariat." So, here we learn that, instead of us doing what A.P. wanted and summarily abolishing the state, Engels wanted the state reshaped well enough for the proletariat to use it.3 'And he adds: "The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time." Here is embedded the germ of the great thought which De Leon was to work out completely thirty years later. By contrasting "working" with "parliamentary," Marx indicates that an entirely new governmental machine had to be evolved, one suited to the new social groundwork, in short, an administration of things, or an industrial administration. "It was [said Marx] ... the political form (at last discovered) under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor."' At least A.P. got his math in the ballpark this time, but, having grasped at two little words - 'working' and 'parliamentary' - A.P.'s imagination ran amok in a flight of fantasy. If Marx had been utopian enough to indicate that 'the form of an industrial administration had to be evolved', he surely would have written so in a place where A.P. could have quoted him directly. But there is no such place. There was, on the other hand, the experience of the working class in the Commune, which was, as A.P. himself quoted, 'the political form (at last discovered) under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.' And the working class was to use this new Commune - this socially controlled democratic republic - to abolish class distinctions and proceed to the classless and stateless administration of things. Certainly the Commune, short-lived as it was, lasting a mere nine weeks, could not be considered a finished and polished product. That was probably the reason Marx slipped into a future tense when describing some of its features, the vast bulk of which, however, were described in the past tense as accomplishments. A closer look at the context of "The Civil War in France" (just before the sentence A.P. quoted) illustrates a bit more of what A.P. did not want us to know about the political nature of the Commune (MESW II, pp. 222-3): ... "The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality, by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditures - the standing army and State functionarism.* Its very existence presupposed the non-existence of monarchy, which, in Europe at least, is the normal incumbrance and indispensable cloak of class-rule. It supplied the Republic with the basis of really democratic institutions. But neither cheap Government nor the "true Republic" was its ultimate aim; they were its mere concomitants. "The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour. "Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class-rule. With labour emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labour ceases to be a class attribute."____________ * In Lenin's "The State and Revolution", this word was translated as "officialdom". - K.E. Marx's text illuminated the political nature of the Commune. It was the political form in which the economic emancipation of the working class was to occur, the political form that had already been discovered, and had been in operation for some nine weeks, as opposed to A.P.'s 'had to be evolved', as if what happened in the Commune was such a failure that the experience only proved that something better had to be evolved. The Commune was such a success that the French and German forces of reaction, which hitherto had been at war with each other, suddenly found some vital interests in common against the existence of the Commune, and then cooperated with one another to crush it. Notice also that, scarcely weeks after the Commune had been crushed by the reaction, Marx wrote about "the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favor". Indeed, as Lenin pointed out in a critique of Plekhanov's book entitled "Anarchism and Socialism" (LCW 25, p. 481): ... "The anarchists had tried to claim the Paris Commune as their "own", so to say, as a corroboration of their doctrine; and they completely misunderstood its lessons and Marx's analysis of these lessons. Anarchism has given nothing even approximating true answers to the concrete political questions: Must the old state machine be smashed? and what should be put in its place? "But to speak of "anarchism and socialism" while completely evading the question of the state, and disregarding the whole development of Marxism before and after the Commune, meant inevitably slipping into opportunism. For what opportunism needs most of all is that the two questions just mentioned should not be raised at all. That in itself is a victory for opportunism." ... Lenin generously stated that 'the anarchists ... completely misunderstood its lessons and Marx's analysis of these lessons.' Perhaps some of 'the best' of the anarchists deserved Lenin's leniency, but I can't help but regard those who were responsible for "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism" as anything less than professional falsifiers of Marxismwho understood the intent of their falsifications, and were in the business of deceiving workers about the entire method of ending their subservience to capital.4 'What Marx here says is that the working class, upon securing or seizing power, must dismantle the Political (parliamentary) State while, on the one hand, it represses the opponents of the working class, and, on the other hand, gradually and as speedily as possible, increases "the total of productive forces."' Was that the experience of the Commune? No matter how many times I read Marx's sentence, or even that sentence in combination with the other 2 phrases that A.P. quoted in "The Passing of the State", I cannot see where Marx said anything resembling the three things A.P. said he did. Take 'the dismantling of the state': A.P. had just finished quoting Marx to the effect that the Commune was the political form in which the economic emancipation of labor was to take place. One better have a darn good reason, then, for dismantling the instrument of freedom. In "The Civil War in France", Marx wrote (MESW II, p. 217): "But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." And did this "ready-made state machinery" equal 'the Political (parliamentary) State' that A.P. wanted dismantled? No matter how bureaucratic, undemocratic, and unrepresentative of the lower classes that the representative institutions might have been, they were not the state institutions that Marx wrote about smashing, nor did they present any threat or danger greater than that of lying to workers or passing bad law; but look at the state machinery that was included in the very next paragraph of "The Civil War in France" (MESW II, p. 217): "But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes. "The centralised State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature -" ... Marx went on to give a history of the struggles for control of the French State since feudalism, making it clear that the state power consists of repressive institutions used by the ruling classes to maintain their interests by a variety of means against any threats. If A.P. had wanted to use a quote indicative of dismantling the state, he could have used the following, just a few pages away (MESW II, pp. 221-2): "It is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterpart of older and even defunct forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which breaks the modern State power, has been mistaken for a reproduction of the mediaeval Communes, which first preceded, and afterwards became the substratum of, that very State power." Marx went on to identify four other types of state that, according to other 'thinkers' of the time, the new Commune resembled. But, in that excerpt, Marx wrote, ... 'this new Commune ...breaks the modern State power' ... , indicating that the Commune replaced "The centralised State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature" ... with new organs of state power created by the lower classes (MESW II, pp. 219-21): "The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of "social republic," with which the revolution of February {1848} was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a Republic that was not only to supersede the monarchical form of class-rule, but class-rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that Republic. "Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people. "The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done atworkmen's wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into the hands of the Commune. "Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the physical force elements of the old Government, the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the "parson-power," by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the Apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. "The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subservience to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable." That was the way in which the Commune broke up the old monarchical institutions and replaced them with a democratic republic that was more democratic than any bourgeoisdemocratic republic that ever existed, and Marx didn't have to tell them what to do; the Communards didn't have to look up the 'formula' for what to do in a book; they acted by instinct in their own self-interest in the same way no one has to 'tell' the ruling classes how to act in their self interest. Secondly, there was nothing in A.P.'s three little quotes from Marx that would indicate that (p. 25): ... 'the working class ... gradually and as speedily as possible, increases "the total of productive forces."' The closest that any of the three quotes came to approaching that idea was when A.P. quoted Marx as having said that the Commune was (p. 25): ... 'the political form (at last discovered) under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.' And nothing in this phrase even comes close to being capable of being interpreted as relating to the speed of the increase of the total of the productive forces. Also, it was not sufficient, according to A.P., for the working class to 'increase the total of productive forces.' Rather, the working class was to increase the total of productive forces 'gradually and as speedily as possible'! But, let's not dwell too long upon the seeming contradiction of doing things 'gradually and as speedily as possible' at the very same time. The actual answer to the question, from "The Manifesto of the Communist Party", was that (MESW I, p. 126): "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." Was there anything 'gradual' implied by 'as rapidly as possible'? For synonyms of 'gradual', my dictionary gives: 'changing ... by fine, slight, or often imperceptible gradations'. The reason Marx specified a 'rapid' pace was to quickly create the economic conditions that would make it less likely for capitalist rule to be restored. Bureaucratic, wasteful and non-productive jobs would be eliminated, and labor was to be replaced with machinery at a more rapid pace under proletarian rule than under capitalist rule, creating all of the commodities and capabilities that society would ever want in plenty, soon creating a climate in which the re-imposition of capitalist rule would become an absurdity that only a rapidly decreasing segment of the population would ever long for. It was such a sweet dream, but proved impossible to realize, so it should be given a decent burial and replaced with a plan more appropriate to highly developed democracies. Nowhere in the works of Marx and Engels that I have accessed so far did the post-revolutionary task of 'increas[ing] the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible' hardly rate the lifting of an eyebrow, because, until 1917, it had never been on anyone's immediate agenda. But A.P. raised it to a matter of high importance in his writings, which was consistent with the way he raised any kind of economic activity to the pinnacle of priorities while down-playing political activities. Notice that Marx used the words: "The proletariat will ... centralise .... production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class", which should be enough to prove to honest people that the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be nothing less than a state controlled by the lower classes, and that it was theoretically possible for them to take and hold state power of their very own, and not capitalist state power, such as when winning a mere electoral victory at the ballot box. But, professional falsifiers of Marxism may forever deny that this was the Marxist theory.5 ... 'Marx clearly ... saw that the proletariat, to use the forceful language of Lenin, must smash up the old State machinery' ... Though A.P. would allow that 'the proletariat ... must smash up the old State machinery', he was not deserting his pacifist anarchist cause, for, according to his caricature of revolution,only legislative bodies were to be disbanded. For A.P., no standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature, etc., existed to smash up. Only the assemblies of the dreaded elected.Economic Conditions and Political Solutions A.P. continued:6 ... 'Marx ... failed (or did not think it necessary at the time) to take into account the development of a situation much more radically different from the seventies than the seventies were from 1847.' What situation developed that Marx overlooked? A.P. was very vague here about the nature of this alleged situation, and didn't define it once, but yet Marx was blamed for perhaps even willfully ignoring it, or otherwise failing to take it into account. Until A.P.'s biographers release the details, if they can find them, one could guess that it had something to do with the enormous development of the means of production that gave rise to monopoly capitalism, and which allegedly gave De Leon his 'great inspiration', or SIU, but that would be speculation. On the other hand, in his 1895 Introduction to Marx's "Class Struggles in France", Engels accounted for the development of many different situations during the previous fifty years, such as advances in the means of production, small and large armaments, mass use of democratic institutions, revolutionary consciousness, the decreasing likelihood of street-fighting, and party tactics. In Marx's February 1881 letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis, advances in the development of the means of production were specifically mentioned (MESC, p. 318): "The doctrinaire and inevitably fantastic anticipation of the programme of action for a revolution of the future only diverts one from the struggle of the present. The dream that the end of the world was near inspired the early Christians in their struggle with the Roman Empire and gave them confidence in victory. Scientific insight into the inevitable disintegration of the dominant order of society, a disintegration which is going on continually before our eyes, and the ever-growing fury into which the masses are lashed by the old ghostly governments, and the enormous positive development of the means of production taking place simultaneously - all this is a sufficient guarantee that as soon as a real proletarian revolution breaks out the conditions of its immediately next modus operandi (though it will certainly not be idyllic) will be in existence." The theory of succession of modes of production from slavery to feudalism to capitalism to socialism depended upon corresponding advances in the development of the means of production. Marx and Engels thought that the means of production had developed to a level sufficient for socialism (or proletarian dictatorship) in their day. By suggesting that Marx or Engels did not take the evolution of various situations into account, A.P. was way off base, as usual.7 'For he, as well as Engels and his contemporaries, proceeded on the assumption that the victorious proletariat would have three main factors to deal with before instituting Socialism proper. First, a powerful and potent, though temporarily beaten, capitalist class; second, a numerically strong petty bourgeois and peasant element, with the actual proletariat everywhere in the minority; and third, an insufficient industrial development.' Look at this very strange theory of revolution: ... 'the victorious proletariat would have three main factors to deal with before instituting Socialism proper.' And just what stage would society have reached when 'the proletariat was victorious, but yet found itself unable to institute socialism'? The victory of the proletariat, in and of itself, sounds like an event that could be celebrated big time, as though things would never again be the same. Or, did A.P. regard the victory of the proletariat as relatively uneventful as the victory of a workers' party at the ballot box? Toward answers to these questions, we were given not a clue. Marx theorized that the victory of the proletariat, by definition, heralds the lower stage of socialism, but A.P. instead told us that the victorious proletariat would have to deal with 'three main factors' before instituting socialism. If such is the case, it begs the question of just how, after the proletariat has dealt with the three main factors, the victorious proletariat would get to institute socialism? Would it be ceremonial, or imperceptibly gradual? To those questions as well, A.P. provided not a hint. Also, try as I did to find a single bit of evidence for this 'three-fold obstacle' or 'three main factors' theory in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, I was unable to uncover any. It would have been nice for the scholar A.P. to have provided us with just one little reference. Though A.P.'s theory bore no resemblance to Marxism, it did reflect some of the conditions of the Soviets earlier in this century. Did A.P. learn something relevant from the experience of the Soviets? Think of it: the victorious proletariat having to deal with the capitalist class, the middle classes, and insufficiently developed industry before they could institute socialism. The struggle for proletarian rule in Russia met with many similar difficulties caused by the underdeveloped conditions, the devastation of the war against external aggression, the civil waragainst propertied elements, the battle against starvation, and other factors. Lenin enumerated them all in his post-revolutionary works and ended up proposing some transitionalmeasures, such as state capitalism, to prepare for a true Soviet proletarian dictatorship at some future date. From its context, A.P. seems to have consigned the applicability of Marx's alleged 'three main factors' theory to developmentally backward countries, but Marx and Engels lived mainly in the most economically advanced countries, and believed that the proletarian revolution could not be successful except through simultaneous revolutions in England and Western Europe- the most advanced capitalist countries - where the 'three main factors' would have impinged less upon hopes of revolutionary success than in any other part of the world, so the 'three main factors' theory could not have originated with Marx and Engels. Also, A.P.'s 'three main factor' theory contradicted the 'matter of course ... transformation into socialism' theory he attributed to Engels in his Preface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science" (analyzed in Part C of this book). There we learned that ... (p. XI): 'Engels ... assumed, however, that, once the proletariat had "seized political power," the transformation into Socialism would follow as a matter of course. We know better today.' Well, the 'matter of course ... transformation into socialism' theory was good enough for A.P.'s other pamphlet because, assuming that the 'seizure of political power' meant only anelectoral victory of a workers' party, A.P. easily showed that transforming means of production into state property amounted to transforming the means of production into capitalist state property, which would then introduce an era of state capitalism, which also meant just another defeat for the well-intentioned, but not-so-bright workers that the Party has forever tried to save from the 'mistake' of using politics and government. To make sure that the proletariat was defeated after victory in "PD vs. D+D" as well (as a punishment for the sin of being politically minded), a whole new 'three main factor' theory thatdidn't apply to 'American conditions' had to be dreamt up: 'Because the super-development of means of production in the USA also enables the formation of Socialist Industrial Unions, the total absence of the 'three main factors' here in the USA will facilitate our immediate establishment of classless and stateless socialism.' While trying to choose from A.P.'s two theories of revolution, a novice might not know which to believe, especially when they contradict one another on the very same issue of arriving at socialism. It was also one more way in which the 'Marxist' SLP consistently invalidated Marx's political theories. If only A.P. were still around to tell us which of the two theories was correct, both of which were alleged to yield failure for the revolution.8 'Throughout all the writings of Marx and Engels on this subject (and the same holds true of the writings of Lenin, who in industrially backward Russia largely faced the same situation generally prevailing at the time of the Paris Commune), Marx and Engels reverted to that three-fold obstacle to immediate and complete proletarian success.' 'Revert', in the dictionary, is a word of many meanings. If Marx and Engels reverted to the three-fold obstacle theory, that could have implied that the three-fold obstacle theory was more primitive compared to some unstated, more highly evolved theory which was not mentioned in that particular context. Could it have been the 'matter of course ... transformation into socialism' theory, or some other theory? Without A.P. here to help us, speculation could go on forever.9 'The transition period to them was not only a prolonged one, but one fraught with real dangers to the proletarian regime. Hence, their repeated insistence (especially since the Paris Commune) on the repressive features of the projected working class government, and their emphasis on the necessity of undisputed working class rule which they occasionally designated the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.' Marx always advocated arming the proletariat, and lots of blood was spilt in his day by brave people fighting to replace monarchical despotisms with democracies, and even a bourgeoisdemocracy was regarded as a major step forward (as revealed in Marx's Sept. 27, 1877, letter to Sorge (me45.278): "The French crisis {between monarchists and republicans} is an altogether secondary affair compared with the oriental one. Yet one can only hope that the bourgeois republic wins, for otherwise we shall have the same old game all over again, and no nation can afford to repeat the same stupidities too often.") Marx and Engels were never in command of a proletarian army, and nowhere in the world did the proletariat enjoy political supremacy. Students of history should be aware of important differences between the theoretical proletarian dictatorship imagined by M+E, and the new state that materialized in the old Soviet Union under Lenin, how matters changed under Stalin, etc. A.P.'s treatment of revolutionary violence for the 1800's hints that 'living in an era of low technological development necessitates violent solutions to the social question.' If that was all that violence was predicated upon, then the modern age should be very enlightened and peaceful indeed, based solely on our circumstance of living in an era of advanced technological development. But, such a theory would simply be another example of the crudest type of economic determinism. In reality, replacing intransigent monarchies with democracies was often a bloody affair, and the further development of fledgling democracies into a wide-spread proletarian dictatorship (by means of winning universal suffrage) might not have been a day at the beach. But, the struggle for democracy and Marx's real theories of proletarian revolution were never acknowledged in A.P.'s pamphlet. A.P. implied that Marx and Engels may have learned something during the Commune that caused ... 'their repeated insistence ... on the repressive features of the projected working class government'. Here we may have a grain of truth in what A.P. wrote, for Marx did criticize the Commune for paying more attention to elections than to maintaining their strategic and political advantages, failing to take over a major bank, failing to march on the old government holed up in Versailles, etc.10 "Because of the significance attached to this phrase since the Russian Revolution I want to emphasize here that the essence of this dictatorship (as understood by Marx and Engels) was: Exercise of supreme power by the proletariat, unconditional surrender of the capitalist class, with the rubbish of parliament, constituent assembly and what not, consigned to the museum of antiquities, as Engels put it." First of all, how does 'supreme power' differ from state power? Secondly, nowhere in the works of Marx and Engels have I seen any mention of the alleged 'surrender of the capitalist class', either on the points of bayonets, conditionally, or otherwise. Of the 70 combinations of the word 'capitalist' or 'bourgeois' with 'surrender' in the Collected Works, not one showed up in the manner A.P. would have us believe it should have, but many were similar to (me9.214): "But it is just this noble reproductive power that the worker surrenders to capital in exchange for means of subsistence received." The Collected Works often indicated that, if the bourgeoisie were to surrender to anyone, the surrender would have been to feudal nobility, or to a constitution. Not mentioned by A.P. was the very intelligent 'buy-out of the capitalist class', which was one civil solution to the social question suggested by Marx himself, according to Engels in his 1894 "The Peasant Question in France and Germany" (MESW III, p. 474): "Marx told me (and how many times!) that in his opinion we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them." Thirdly, A.P. once again interpreted the state to be nothing more than the 'rubbish of parliament, constituent assembly and what not', and displayed his usual willingness to consign them all 'to the museum of antiquities' , which is nothing less than the deliberate act of abolishing democratically elected representative bodies, much in the way the Party's SIU programwould also deal with elected political bodies, which A.P. always misinterpreted as the sum total of the state. In his "Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State", Engels gave a more reasonable view of putting the "whole machinery of state ... into the museum of antiquities" (MESW III, p. 330): "At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe." A.P. could not let his readers know that, according to Engels, putting the "whole machinery of state ... into the museum of antiquities" was possible only after 'Society ... will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers' and 'the split of society into classes ... will have ceased to be a necessity.' As is widely accepted on the left,proletarian dictatorships, or states of any other kind, are concomitants of class divisions. Reduce class distinctions, and the necessity for a state of any kind declines proportionally. A.P. could not have helped notice that very concept in that same quote from Engels, so A.P. knew he was taking the concept of 'putting the machinery of state into the museum of antiquities' completely out of context. A.P. continued with a chapter which seemed to be but a prelude to a subsequent chapter about unions (pp. 26-8):p. 26:"Political Victory Insufficient. "As I stated before, by 1904 De Leon had come face to face with the question of what to do when political power fell to the working class. {1} With the tremendous industrial development in America, with its numerically insignificant, and economically weak "middle class," and its total absence of a peasantry such as is found in continental Europe, he had come to realize that a mere political victory of the working class here was insufficient - nay, a menace. {2} For despite periodic outbreaks of "middle class" discontent, the rule of top-capitalism was undisputed in every real sense; the power of the plutocracy was practically unlimited. {3} On the other hand, the proletariat formed the overwhelming majority in the country, and as the spurs of exploitation were driven deeper into its flanks, the working class was becoming more and more restless. Hence the need of a "bulwark" and hence, again, the capitalist-inspired and capitalist-nurtured craft unions and the plebs leaders or labor lieutenants. {4} Politically, the country was (and it still is) in the grip of the entrenched politicians of the Republican and Democratic parties. Well has Engels described the extent and nature of this powerful political domination: ""Nowhere [said Engels in 1891] {5} do the 'politicians' form a more distinct and more powerful subdivision of the nation than in the United States. Here both the great parties, to which the predominance alternately falls, are in their turn ruled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate upon seats in the legislative bodies of the Union and the separate States, or who live by agitation for their party and are rewarded with offices after its victory. It is well known how the Americans have tried for thirty years past to throw off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and how, notwithstanding, they sink ever deeper into the mire of corruption. It is just in the United States that we can most clearly see the process through which the State acquires a position of independent power over against the society, for which it was originally designed as a mere tool. There exist here no dynasty, no aristocracy, no standing army with the exception of a few men to guard against the Indians, no bureaucracy permanently installed and pensioned. Nevertheless, we have here two great rings of political speculators, that alternately take possession of the power of State and exploit it with the most corrupt means and to the most corrupt purposes. And the nation is powerless against these men, who nominally are its servants, but in reality are its two overruling and plundering hordes of politicians." (Engels's Introduction to German edition of "Paris Commune" by Marx.)" "This description, as you will note, is as adequate today as thirty years ago." Let's see, 1931 minus 1891 is thirty - No! - forty years. Not only could A.P. not convincingly falsify the Marxist theory of the state, but he also couldn't subtract very well. And this was from the sixth edition, which may also be an indication of the degree to which the Party bureaucracy respected accuracy. I wonder if any of the members ever wrote to A.P. about his math error. If they did, it certainly didn't do any good. Overall, this whole chapter seems to be a lesson in 'what an absolutely bloody swamp political life is, an evil best left to the miserable slimy critters who inhabit that dark world. Even Engels thought that American politics was a Charybdis that would only pull its victims down.' A.P. was obviously setting us up for his presentation of the 'only' way for workers to climb out of their predicament. Going back to the top of the chapter "Political Victory Insufficient", A.P. wrote (p. 26):1 'As I stated before, by 1904 De Leon had come face to face with the question of what to do when political power fell to the working class.' Once again, A.P. repeated the passive theory of the revolution, practically identical to the fable introduced in his Preface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", where he wrote that 'Lenin ... discussing the problem confronting the workers of Russia when political power fell into their hands.' But, if A.P. had been in Russia in 1917, he would have seen just how passivewas that particular change in power. The passive kind of 'political victory' cohabits somewhat comfortably with a peaceful victory of the workers' party at the ballot box, common occurrences in Europe and America for over a century, but quite inconsistent with violent replacements of feudal monarchies with democracies, as in the February revolution in Russia, and in so many revolutions in France. The Party leadership that was so antagonistic toward reforms was also very much dependent upon the reformist 'pure and simple political victory of the proletariat' as the launching point for its critique of democracy. By restricting the meaning of the political victory to electoral victories, they could then logically criticize the insufficiency of such a victory to perfect the abolition of the state and capitalism. The Party ignored another Marxist meaning of political victory, that of replacing capitalist states with workers' states, under which scenario the concentration of productive forces into the hands of the proletariat organized as ruling class could never have been interpreted as the concentration of productive forces into the hands of the capitalist state, as it plausibly could if political victories were restricted to mere electoral victories of workers' parties. The victory at the ballot box was one aspect of Marxist tactics, applicable in Marx's time only to democratic republics like the USA, England, and few others. In Lenin's opinion, the rise of militarist bureaucracy during the early 1900's would preclude an electorally victorious socialist party from socializing ownership of means of production. But, the lower classes in the West refused to adopt the Marxist-Leninist goal of gaining control of state power in order to expropriate the capitalist class. Because labor creates property, Marx's German Ideology of the 1840's advised conceiving the abolition of property as the abolition of labor. If activists had taken Marx's early philosophy to heart, expropriation might not have become such a pressing agenda item, and lots of alienating waste avoided.2 'With the tremendous industrial development in America, with its numerically insignificant, and economically weak "middle class," and its total absence of a peasantry such as is found in continental Europe, he had come to realize that a mere political victory of the working class here was insufficient - nay, a menace.' Oh, sure, workers here shouldn't even think about a political victory, and certainly not a 'menacing' electoral victory at the ballot box. A.P. sounded worried that the political dominance of the capitalist class would be menaced by proletarian political power. A.P. again aroused curiosity as to why the alleged weakness of the middle classes made a political victory amenace, but we were given not a clue until A.P.'s subsequent chapter entitled "Political Movement Destructive", where the simple electoral victory was described as a menace supposedlybecause 'the capitalist class would ignore the mandate at the ballot box and block production', which was described as a catastrophe.3 "For despite periodic outbreaks of "middle class" discontent, the rule of top-capitalism was undisputed in every real sense; the power of the plutocracy was practically unlimited. On the other hand, the proletariat formed the overwhelming majority in the country, and as the spurs of exploitation were driven deeper into its flanks, the working class was becoming more and more restless." A.P. seemed to be building up to some kind of conclusion, so we should take note that, after the 'menace of a political victory for the proletariat' element, A.P. added the elements of 'unlimited power for the plutocracy', and the 'increasing economic exploitation of an increasingly restless proletariat.'A Swipe at Unions4 "Hence the need of a "bulwark" and hence, again, the capitalist-inspired and capitalist-nurtured craft unions and the plebs leaders or labor lieutenants. Politically, the country was (and it still is) in the grip of the entrenched politicians of the Republican and Democratic parties." After the previous elements, A.P. added 'capitalist-inspired labor unions', and 'the political domination of the country by the two major capitalist political parties'. One could summarize all of the above as: 'The political situation was hopeless, the working class was increasingly exploited economically, and was boxed in by capitalist economic organizations.' From this hopeless set of circumstances, whatever could the working class do? As had been so often taught in the old study class, the union is the defense mechanism that the working class organizes to ward off encroachments by capital. But, until the mid-70's, the SLP Constitution forbade members from joining unions, if possible, and to always refuse leadership positions therein. This blunder certainly helped keep the Party isolated from the working class, making it difficult to correct its mistakes, but while I was there, the National Office intellectual staff began a campaign against the absurd ban on participation in unions, and by the late 70's it was changed, which shows that the Party could occasionally do some sensible things, and members given chances to finally learn new things. When SLP criticism of the trade unions was properly aimed at the corruption of some labor leaders, it could be somewhat educational. In "'Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder", Lenin sharply criticized parties that refused to work within 'reactionary' trade unions (LCW 31, pp. 51-5): "Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionism in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested in a far greater measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found support in the trade unions (and to some extent still do so in a small number of unions), as a result of the latter's craft narrow-mindedness, craft selfishness and opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have acquired a much firmer footing in the trade unions; there the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois "labour aristocracy", imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted, has developed into a much stronger section than in our country. That is incontestable. ... "We are waging a struggle against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that .. we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" (as we have always said the Mensheviks are), or "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America. To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or "workers who have become completely bourgeois" (cf. Engels' letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers). "This ridiculous "theory" that Communists should not work in reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of the "Left" Communists towards the question of influencing the "masses", and their misuse of clamour about the "masses". If you want to help the "masses" and win the sympathy and support of the "masses", you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the "leaders" (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations - even the most reactionary - in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. ... "Millions of workers in Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out "the masses", "the masses!" but refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are "reactionary", and invent a brand-new, immaculate little "Workers' Union", which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. "Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship" will be the only(!) condition of membership. (See the passage quoted above.) "It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to the revolution than that caused by the "Left" Revolutionaries! Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make "recognition of the dictatorship" a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to workamong them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly "Left" slogans. "There can be no doubt that the Gomperses, the Hendersons, the Jouhaux and the Legiens are very grateful to those "Left" revolutionaries who, like the German opposition "on principle" (heaven preserve us from such "principles"!), or like some of the revolutionaries in the American Industrial Workers of the World advocate quitting the reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in them. These men, the "leaders" of opportunism, will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even - if need be - to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs. Under tsarism we had no "legal opportunities" whatsoever until 1905. However, when Zubatov, agent of the secret police, organised Black-Hundred workers' assemblies and workingmen's societies for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and combating them, we sent members of our Party to these assemblies and into these societies ... "They established contact with the masses, were able to carry on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov's agents.* Of course, in Western Europe, which is imbued with most deep-rooted legalistic, constitutionalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, this is more difficult of achievement. However, it can and must be carried out, and systematically at that."__________ "* The Gomperses, Hendersons, Jouhaux and Legiens are nothing but Zubatovs, differing from our Zubatov only in their European garb and polish, and the civilised, refined and democratically suave manner of conducting their despicable policy." {Note by Lenin.} Among other things in this excerpt, we could note that: 1) the unions of the advanced western countries were far more capitalist-oriented than those of the Soviet Union, 2) it is a blunder for communists to try to create new kinds of unions instead of working within the old ones, 3) the interests of some radicals in forming these separate unions indicates a real gulf between their interests and those of the rank-and-file, 4) requiring rank-and-file unionists to adhere to some kind of ideology as a condition of membership to new unions is a blunder that only isolates the rank-and-file from contact with socialist ideas, 5) radical unionists who advocate new and pure unions are helping reactionary ideas to prevail in older and bigger unions, 6) communists should use deception and illegal means, if necessary, to stay in unions and carry on propaganda within them, and 7) in spite of the hardships of working within reactionary unions, that is the only real way to get communist work done among uneducated rank-and-filers. Certainly as well, the excerpts beg the question of how hard Lenin studied De Leon's writings and still not see that De Leon's program was similar to what some of his 'domestic Mensheviks' were advocating. This excerpt also reveals Lenin's determination to bring communism to the USA by any means necessary. In 1931, American workers were deep in the abyss of the anized labor wanted to pass a 30-Hour Bill to enable scarce work to be equitably shared among many more workers. That same Bill made it all of the way through the Senate and looked like it was going to pass the House when FDR began to campaign against it. In exchange for supporting FDR's policies, Labor received concessions like the Wagner Act, which protectedLabor's right to organize.5 'Well has Engels described the extent and nature of this powerful political domination:' ... The Progress Publishers translation of the long quote from Engels' Introduction to "The Civil War in France" is reproduced in Part C of this book. In comparison, A.P.'s 'translation' appears no better than a butchery or a radical modification of a bona fide version, perhaps to correspond to 'American conditions'. For instance, where Engels wrote "North America", "United States" was substituted, as though a translator couldn't tell the difference; and in the SLP version, the language is contorted, as in: 'the State acquires a position of independent power over against the society' ... Compare that to: "the state power making itself independent in relation to society" ... All of the elements that A.P. assembled could be summarized as: 'Both the political and economic situations were totally dominated by the capitalist class, while the exploitation of the working class was increasing.' After setting up this scenario, A.P. continued with (pp. 28-30):p. 28:"Union Mission Defined. "These, I repeat, were the conditions generally prevailing when in 1904 De Leon made his epoch-making address, "The Burning Question of Trades Unionism." Here De Leon, for the first time fully and with great precision and clarity, outlined his contribution to Marxian thought, viz., the "great historic revolutionary mission" of the true economic organization of labor. He (De Leon) derides the "pure and simple" politicians for contending that the union is of no great use to the workers, "that the union might as well be smashed now as later." He adds, "They are the real Utopians of today who imagine the Socialist Commonwealth can be established as spring establishes itself through its balmy atmosphere, and without effort melts away the winter snows." He lashes the "pure and simple" unionist for failing to understand the necessity of political action on the part of labor. He emphasizes the fact that the working class has no knowledge of, and no interest in, capitalist law-making, except to "sweep the vermin [of capitalist law] into the ash-barrel of oblivion." {1} The political aspect of the labor movement, he said, spells REVOLUTION. He points to the duty of Socialist workingmen (if any) elected to office - "no tinkering, no compromise, unqualified overthrow of existing laws.That means the dethronement of the capitalist class." {2} He then outlines the reason for the power of the capitalist class, "the fact that the WORKING CLASS is not organized." {3} The majority of the voters are workers. But even if this majority were to sweep the field, they would find the capitalist able to throw the country into panic, chaos, and famine unless "THE WORKINGMEN WERE SO WELL ORGANIZED IN THE SHOPS THAT THEY COULD LAUGH AT ALL SHUT-DOWN ORDERS, AND CARRY ON PRODUCTION." {4} Referring to the heterogeneous nature of the constituency in political territory he comes to the crux of the matter: ""Civilized society will know no such ridiculous thing as geographic constituencies. It will only know industrial constituencies. The parliament of civilization in America will consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of representatives of trades throughout the land, and their legislative work will not be the complicated one which a society of conflicting interests, such as capitalism, requires but the easy one which can be summed up in the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work required - and that any average set of workingmen's representatives are fully able to ascertain, {5} infinitely better than our modern rhetoricians in Congress. . ." "De Leon then outlines the supreme mission of the revolutionary economic organization as being that of organizing the working class industrially - those with, as well as those without, jobs - and he adds that the mission of the economic organization is important also in that "the industrial organization forecasts the future constituencies of the parliaments of the Socialist Republic." {6} (Emphasis mine.)" After setting up the hopeless scenario in his previous chapter, A.P. then provided us with 'the economic solution we were waiting for.' What a relief to finally know what to do! A.P. alluded to the political victory of the workers' party at the ballot box in his phrase: ... 'if this majority were to sweep the field'. Let it be noted that no political victories other than those allowed by democratic processes were ever mentioned by A.P.'Unions are Good, Politics are Bad.' A.P. described De Leon's teachings (p. 28):1 "He emphasizes the fact that the working class has no knowledge of, and no interest in, capitalist law-making, except to "sweep the vermin [of capitalist law] into the ash-barrel of oblivion."" Dumping capitalist laws and lawmakers seems to have been defined here as an essential post-revolutionary task. Eliminating capitalist law would be consistent with the other scenario, viz., disbanding elected legislative bodies. One can only guess as to how much of civil, criminal, maritime, commercial, or every law would be disposed of. Was there any basis for such 'revolutionary' political action in the works of Marx and Engels? Here's what Marx wrote about law in his 1872 "The Nationalisation of the Land" (MESW II, p. 288): "In the progress of history the conquerors found it convenient to give to their original titles, derived from brute force, a sort of social standing through the instrumentality of laws imposed by themselves. "At last comes the philosopher and demonstrates that those laws imply and express the universal consent of mankind. If private property in land be indeed founded upon such an universal consent, it will evidently become extinct from the moment the majority of a society dissent from warranting it." The key here is 'universal consent'. Laws relating to property have survived other changes in class rule. In his 1872 "Housing Question", Engels showed how law evolved through the ages (MESW II, pp. 365-6): "At a certain, very primitive stage of the development of society, the need arises to bring under a common rule the daily recurring acts of production, distribution and exchange of products, to see to it that the individual subordinates himself to the common conditions of production and exchange. This rule, which at first is custom, soon becomes law. With law, organs necessarily arise which are entrusted with its maintenance - public authority, the state. With further social development, law develops into a more or less comprehensive legal system. The more intricate this legal system becomes, the more is its mode of expression removed from that in which the usual economic conditions of the life of society are expressed. It appears as an independent element which derives the justification for its existence and the substantiation of its further development not from the economic relations but from its own inner foundations or, if you like, from the "concept of the will." People forget that their right derived from their economic conditions of life, just as they have forgotten that they themselves derive from the animal world. With the development of the legal system into an intricate, comprehensive whole a new social division of labour becomes necessary; an order of professional jurists develops and with these legal science comes into being. In its further development this science compares the legal systems of various peoples and various times not as a reflection of the given economic relationships, but as systems which find their substantiations in themselves. The comparison presupposes points in common, and these are found by the jurists compiling what is more or less common to all these legal systems and calling it natural right. And the stick used to measure what is natural right and what is not is the most abstract expression of right itself, namely, justice. Henceforth, therefore, the development of right for the jurists, and for those who take their word for everything, is nothing more than a striving to bring human conditions, so far as they are expressed in legal terms, ever closer to the ideal of justice, eternal justice. And always this justice is but the ideologised, glorified expression of the existing economic relations, now from their conservative, and now from their revolutionary angle. The justice of the Greeks and Romans held slavery to be just; the justice of the bourgeois of 1789 demanded the abolition of feudalism on the ground that it was unjust. For the Prussian Junker even the miserable District Ordinance is a violation of eternal justice. The conception of eternal justice, therefore, varies not only with time and place, but also with the persons concerned, and belongs among those things of which Mülberger correctly says, "everyone understands something different." While in everyday life, in view of the simplicity of the relations discussed, expressions like right, wrong, justice, and sense of right are accepted without misunderstanding even with reference to social matters, they create, as we have seen, the same hopeless confusion in any scientific investigation of economic relations as would be created, for instance, in modern chemistry if the terminology of the phlogiston theory were to be retained. The confusion becomes still worse if one, like Proudhon, believes in this social phlogiston, "justice," or if one, like Mülberger, avers that the phlogiston theory is as correct as the oxygen theory." Engels showed how customs developed into laws, and how both depend upon underlying economic relationships. There was no indication here, nor anywhere else in the works of Marx and Engels that I have seen, where laws, or elected law-making bodies, were to be the targets of proletarian direct action, simply because, as in the Communist Manifesto, the abolition of capitalism was not on the immediate agenda. If capitalism was intended to be the economic system, even under proletarian rule, then there should be no question about keeping intact a good deal of law, capitalist or not, until the abolition of class distinctions.2 "The political aspect of the labor movement, he said, spells REVOLUTION. He points to the duty of Socialist workingmen (if any) elected to office - "no tinkering, no compromise,unqualified overthrow of existing laws. That means the dethronement of the capitalist class."" For some reason, De Leon's rhetoric conjures up images of law books being thrown out of library windows after the revolution. Once again, A.P. gave us a very non-Marxist concept ofrevolution, where the 'overthrow of existing laws' climaxes the political part of revolution. Simple, but also violent, for bodies of law which have undergone evolution over eons are not so easily tossed out. De Leon's gimmick sounds like the negation of only the most civilized part of the state apparatus, and the subject of whether armed enforcers of 'capitalist' law would stand by and allow such a wholesale demolition of law was never approached.3 "He then outlines the reason for the power of the capitalist class, "the fact that the WORKING CLASS is not organized."" This was a reasonable statement for a change. Once in a while the old anarchists could say something with which I could agree. If everything they said was a lie, they'd have no credibility with which to build on. But this rare occasion only led us to:4 'The majority of the voters are workers. But even if this majority were to sweep the field, they would find the capitalist able to throw the country into panic, chaos, and famine unless "THE WORKINGMEN WERE SO WELL ORGANIZED IN THE SHOPS THAT THEY COULD LAUGH AT ALL SHUT-DOWN ORDERS, AND CARRY ON PRODUCTION."' What an idiotic scenario. Workers would never get anywhere near to an electoral victory running on a platform that got the capitalist class so riled up as to lock workers out of their factories, as if that had a snow-ball's chance in hell of being a natural consequence of an equally unlikely display of overwhelming socialist sentiment among workers. Another 'big mistake' here was the suggestion that the battle for supremacy was a battle for control of the means of production, instead of a battle for political influence, or for state power.5 "Referring to the heterogeneous nature of the constituency in political territory he comes to the crux of the matter: '"Civilized society will know no such ridiculous thing as geographic constituencies. It will only know industrial constituencies. The parliament ... will consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of representatives of trades ... and their legislative work will ... be ... the easy one which can be summed up in the statistics of the wealth needed, the wealth producible, and the work required - and that any average set of workingmen's representatives are fully able to ascertain"' ... Here De Leon described an essence of utopian and anarcho-syndicalist theory: a revolutionary change to a stateless administration of things by means of the economic organization of labor. No one should hold their breath waiting for this scheme of organizing classless and stateless society to materialize anytime soon. While the final goal of arriving at classless and stateless society is desired by many Marxists, reformers and anarchists alike, anarchists deny any need for political evolution to get to that goal, which to them is to be achieved 'at once'.6 'De Leon then outlines the supreme mission of the revolutionary economic organization as being that of organizing the working class industrially - those with, as well as those without, jobs - and he adds that the mission of the economic organization is important also in that "the industrial organization forecasts the future constituencies of the parliaments of the Socialist Republic."' More utopia, but this was one of those not very frequent places where the jobless were mentioned. De Leon wrote of the 'supreme mission' of the economic organization, but just what that mission might be has been the subject of differing shades of opinion. Marx differentiated between economic and political working class missions in a November 1871 letter to Bolte (MESC, pp. 254-5): "The ultimate object of the political movement of the working class is, of course, the conquest of political power for this class, and this naturally requires that the organisation of the working class, an organisation which arises from its economic struggles, should previously reach a certain level of development. "On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class as a class confronts the ruling classes and tries to constrain them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt by strikes, etc., in a particular factory or even in a particular trade to compel individual capitalists to reduce the working day, is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force through an eight-hour, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say, a class movement, with the object of enforcing its interests in a general form, in a form possessing general, socially coercive force. While these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are in turn equally a means of developing this organisation." From the above, it appears that the most class-conscious workers and unions are those that fight on political, as well as economic fronts, and that the real victory of the workers will be in the political arena. And look at what politically minded workers fight for - reductions in working hours! How apt. In the not-so-apt anarcho-syndicalist movement, however, it is held that unions will be the units of organization of the future society, and that political organization is secondary. This idea reflected the more despotic political conditions of absolute monarchies, back when workers were not politically represented. Various schemes for circumventing such restrictions, and reorganizing society using unions as a new foundation, are old hat. During the First International, such an idea became the fancy of one of Marx's old friends, Johannes Philip Becker (DFI 3, p. 445, footnote 168): "On the eve of the Eisenach Congress (of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party), Becker worked out a scheme for founding a German workers' party on the basis of trade organisations which were to form a union embracing all German-speaking workers in different countries. This union was to be headed by a Central Committee. This scheme did not conform with the level of the working class movement in Germany where conditions were ripe for forming a proletarian party on a national scale. Becker's plan was sharply criticised by Engels who wrote to Marx on July 30, 1869: "Old Becker must have gone completely off his rocker. How can he decree that the trades unions must be the true workers' association and the basis of any organisation, that the other unions must only temporarily exist alongside with them, etc. All this in a country where there are no real trades unions as yet. What 'intricate' organisation! On the one hand, each trade centralises itself in a national summit and, on the other hand, various trades of a locality centralise themselves in a local summit. If one wants to make incessant squabbling permanent, he should use this form of organisation. But in essence it is nothing more than the wish of the old German artisan to save in each town his own 'tavern' which he regards as a basis for the unity of the workers' organisation."" In "Marx and the Trade Unions", Lozovsky revealed the origin of anarcho-syndicalist thought in the works of Bakunin (M+TU, pp. 35-6): "It is interesting to note the views of Bakunin on what the workers must demand. In the draft programme of the International Revolutionary Society, Bakunin writes: "The worker demands and must demand: (1) Equality - political, economic and social - for all classes and all peoples on earth; (2) the abolition of inherited property; (3) transfer of the land to the agricultural associations for use by them, and the transfer of capital and all means of production to the workers' industrial associations." "Whereas Marx raised the question of the abolition of classes, Bakunin speaks of the equality of classes. (True, later on, under the pressure of Marx's criticism, Bakunin abandoned this formulation.) Bakunin already here expressed the idea of transferring the enterprises to the workers' industrial associations, the idea that was afterwards taken as a basis for all theories developed by the French, Spanish and Italian anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists. It is a theory that never has been or could have been realised in practice anywhere, although the anarchists, opposed to power, succeeded in establishing their power over considerable territories (for example, Machno in Russia)." SLP literature has long propagandized that their Socialist Industrial Union program was De Leon's unique and brilliant invention, but there is plenty of evidence to show that its basis had already been thought up many years before. Was De Leon the first to modify Bakunin's idea to include industrial unions? That would be like competing for the honor of having falsified Marxism in a way that would bring in more workers who are susceptible to believing in phony theories. It would differ little from the pride of shady capitalists who successfully figure out how to con even more people to buy shoddy goods. A.P. continued with a new chapter (pp. 30-1):p. 30:"Marxism Fulfilled. "Here we have the rounding out of the Marxian principle of proletarian revolution. This is the real form at last discovered "under which [in ultra-capitalist countries] to work out the economic emancipation of labor." {1} What Marx forecast, and what was implied in his comments on the Paris Commune, De Leon here presents, not yet in full-fledged form, but with sufficient precision and clearness as to outline in this important and the only contribution "to Socialist thought since Marx." In the parts quoted we have the fulfillment of all the conditions laid down by Marx, and of all that is implicit in Marxism. {2} But the next year was to provide De Leon with the opportunity of completing his theory of the industrial constituency of the new society. By this time the Industrial Workers of the World had been launched, and inspired by the presence of this new promising union, he threw himself into the task of clarifying obscure points. His revolutionary ardor has now risen to new heights. It is, indeed, an inspired, yet a sober and thoroughly balanced Marxian revolutionist who at Minneapolis lays down the principles of Socialist reconstruction of society. Yet, it is not an egotist who here frantically sings his own praises. At no time does he announce to the world that he has made a great discovery. {3} Rather does he emphasize the fact that the highly developed capitalist system in this country has made possible the projection of this addition to Marxian science. {4} And while it is true that circumstance makes the man, it is also true that the right man must be there to serve as the true instrument of circumstance. And the right man was, indeed, there, in the full flower of his genius. Speaking on the point that the final, the consummating act of working class emancipation must be achieved by the toilers "taking and holding" the product of their labor "through an economic organization of the working class, etc.," {5} he says: ""In no country, outside of the United States, is this theory applicable; in no country, outside of the United States, is the theory rational. It is irrational and, therefore, inapplicable in all other countries, with the possible exception of Great Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, because no country but the United States has reached that stage of full-orbed capitalism - economic, political and social - that the United States has attained. In other words, no other country is ripe for the execution of Marxian revolutionary tactics." {6} ("Socialist Reconstruction of Society.")" The main point made by A.P. seems to be that 'Marxism would be perfectly fulfilled in the United States and possibly the rest of the English-speaking world by implementing the De Leonist plan to industrially reorganize labor.' It made me proud at one time to discover that I was living in one of the few countries where this could happen, until I finally got around to educating myself as to the improbability of that plan. This theme of national chauvinism has often been repeated in SLP literature, and when I first saw it, it had the desired effect of making me feel proud to live in the country with 'the perfect flowering of capitalist technological development', though I wasn't sure if I should trust that feeling, especially after becoming quite critical of the USA, particularly for its role in the Vietnam war. But, to some extent, I felt for awhile that I was in the right place at the right time, even if the revolution didn't seem to be at hand. Later on, as I became more skeptical of all of the Party's promises with such a small delivery, I wondered where the workers fit in who were carrying out revolutions in the colonies. After I thought about it long enough and watched the producing classes of the colonies overturn colonial oppressors and have profound effects upon their living conditions - while conditions in this country continued to deteriorate - I felt like I had been taken to the cleaners one more time.The Day De Leon Saved the World According to A.P., it was all a matter of form:1 'Here we have the rounding out of the Marxian principle of proletarian revolution. This is the real form at last discovered "under which [in ultra-capitalist countries] to work out the economic emancipation of labor."' Here A.P. sloppily paraphrased a portion of Marx's "The Civil War in France" (MESW II, p. 223): ... 'the Commune ... was ... the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour.' The Commune was both a 'real' and a political form that was discovered and implemented by the producing classes of France, as opposed to De Leon's economic SIU form, which has yet to be organized. Paraphrasing the founders of socialism is a clever technique, especially if their words can be manipulated to appear harmonious with anarchist doctrine. Left out of A.P.'s phrase was the fact that 'the Commune was a POLITICAL form'. Minus the 'political' adjective, the phrase could conceivably be interpreted to appear as harmonious with: 'The SIU is the economic form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.' In order to prevent the concept of political activism from forming in the minds of his readers, A.P. consistently refrained from using the "political" adjective whenever possible. Speaking of paraphrasing: A long time ago, one of the members paraphrased a certain statement from Lenin's "The State and Revolution". The original phrase was (LCW 25, p. 417): "Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." This quote was paraphrased by the member as 'Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the Socialist Industrial Union.' That sounded impressive and profound at the time, and I harbored little doubt about it until after my discovery of the Party's fraudulent treatment of the subject.2 'In the parts quoted we have the fulfillment of all the conditions laid down by Marx, and of all that is implicit in Marxism.' Here A.P. proclaimed that De Leon's version of 'Marxism' met his false standards with flying colors. But, as usual, Party theories of economic revolution bear little resemblance to Marx's theories and observations of political revolution.3 "Yet, it is not an egotist who here frantically sings his own praises. At no time does he announce to the world that he has made a great discovery." I'm sure everyone was grateful for the restraint allegedly displayed by De Leon. Was it an unusual display of self-restraint that made this biographical note so important an item for our consumption?4 'Rather does he emphasize the fact that the highly developed capitalist system in this country has made possible the projection of this addition to Marxian science.' A.P. would have loved for us to believe that: 'Advances in the means of production showed De Leon the form into which workers should organize in order to achieve their emancipation.' If anything qualifies as an addition to Marxian science, it was Marx's own 1872 statement that democratic governments enable workers to self-emancipate peacefully. TheParty praises the allowance for peaceful change written into our Constitution, but, after the SIU revolution, the US Constitution would go out the window, along with all the rest of 'capitalist law'.5 ... 'the final, the consummating act of working class emancipation must be achieved by the toilers "taking and holding" the product of their labor "through an economic organization of the working class, etc.,"' Putting all of the 'revolutionary' elements together: 'The political part of the revolution is the electoral victory of the workers' party, the abolition of elected representative bodies, and the discarding of capitalist law; while the economic aspect is the taking and holding of the means of production.' Overall, this is getting to be a pretty complicated revolution, and has nothing in common with revolutions that have occurred so far.6 ""In other words, no other country is ripe for the execution of Marxian revolutionary tactics."" A.P. failed 100% to reproduce Marx's revolutionary tactics for our edification, but that didn't stop him from declaring them to be 100% compatible with his SIU program. Petersen continued with a new chapter (pp. 31-4):p. 31:"Political Movement Destructive. "With magnificent scorn and contempt De Leon lashes the various "owls, the pseudo-Marxists included," {1} who are all set afluttering in their failure to understand, or unwillingness to accept, the revolutionary implications of the supreme mission of the economic organization. Branding the capitalist unionism of the A.F. of L. {2} as a "capitalist contrivance . . . calculated to block the path of [true] unionism," he makes this significant statement: ""The Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World is the first pronouncement on the field of practice that clinches this many-sided issue. As becomes her opportunities, therefore her duty, this fruit first ripened on the soil of America." {3} ("Socialist Reconstruction of Society.") "He thereupon takes up the question of the political party. With equal incisiveness, and great clarity of thought, he places the reason for, and the function of a political party in its proper relation to the central question, which is the "taking and holding" of industry for the purpose of planned social production: ""It does not lie in a political organization, that is, a party, to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. {4} Both the 'reason' for a political party and its 'structure' unfit it for such work..... ""The 'reason' for a political party unfits it to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. {5} As shown when I dealt with the first sentence of this clause - the sentence that urges the necessity of political unity - the 'reason' for a political movement is the exigencies of the bourgeois shell in which the Social Revolution must partly shape its course. The governmental administration of capitalism is the State, the government proper (that institution is purely political). Political power, in the language of Marx, is merely the organized power of the capitalist class to oppress, to curb, to keep the working class in subjection. {6} The bourgeois shell in which the Social Revolution must partly shape its course dictates the setting up of a body that shall contest the possession of the political robber burg by the capitalist class. The reason for such initial tactics also dictates their ult imate goal - THE RAZING TO THE GROUND OF THE ROBBER BURG OF CAPITALIST TYRANNY. {7} The shops, the yards, the mills, in short, the mechanical establishments of production, now in the hands of the capitalist class - they are all to be 'taken,' not for the purpose of being destroyed, but for the purpose of being 'held'; for the purpose of improving and enlarging all the good that is latent in them, and that capitalism dwarfs; in short, they are to be 'taken and held' in {8} order to save them for civilization. It is exactly the reverse with the 'political power.' That is to be taken for the purpose of ABOLISHING IT. It follows herefrom that the goal of the political movement of labor is purely DESTRUCTIVE. Suppose that, at some election, the classconscious political arm of Labor were to sweep the field; suppose the sweeping were done in such a landslide fashion that the capitalist election officials are themselves so completely swept off their base that they wouldn't, if they could, and they couldn't, if they would, count us out; suppose that, from President down to Congress and the rest of the political redoubts of the capitalist robber burg, our candidates were installed; - suppose that, {9} what would there be for them to do? What should there be for them to do? Simply TO ADJOURN THEMSELVES, ON THE SPOT, SINE DIE. Their work would be done by disbanding. The political movement of labor, that, in the event of {10} triumph, would prolong its existence a second after triumph, would be a usurpation. It would be either a usurpation, or the signal for a social catastrophe. It would be the signal for a social catastrophe if the political triumph did not find the working class of the land industrially organized, that is, in full possession of the plants of production and distribution, capable, accordingly, to assume the integral conduct of the productive powers of the land. The catastrophe would be instantaneous. {11} The plants of production and distribution having remained in capitalist hands, production would be instantly blocked. On the other hand, if the political triumph does find the working class industrially organized, then for the political movement to prolong its existence would be to attempt to usurp the powers which its very triumph announces have devolved upon the central administration of the industrial organization. The 'reason' for a political movement obviously unfits it to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. What the political movement 'moves {12} into' is not the shops, but the robber burg of capitalism - for the purpose of dismantling it." ("Socialist Reconstruction of Society.") "Note here the close parallel between this last quoted statement and Marx's declaration that the purpose of the "Communal Constitution [was to] become a reality by the destruction ofthe State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence."" Instead of being consistent with the Marxist intent of 'taking and holding the power of the state', much of the emphasis in this chapter was with taking and holding the means of production, which is basic anarchist ideology. The paradigm of 'the workers' industrial organization ready to carry on production after the victory at the ballot box' has a lot of revolutionary tension associated with it, and while searching for a model with similar revolutionary tension in the works of Marx and Engels, all that seemed applicable was their frequent warnings to revolutionaries to avoid taking state power before enough supportive forces had been gathered, in order to avoid a blood bath.1 'With magnificent scorn and contempt De Leon lashes the various "owls, the pseudo-Marxists included," who are all set afluttering in their failure to understand, or unwillingness to accept, the revolutionary implications of the supreme mission of the economic organization.' Does this 'owl' talk mean that some 'wise guys' tried to 'hoot' De Leon off the stage? Note the violent language used by the peaceful anarchist A.P., with his descriptions of 'magnificent scorn and contempt', 'lashes', and 'branding'. A similar approach to the enemies of the anarchists has been observed in other places in this and other pamphlets, including a tendency to use 'fighting words'. Don't let anybody get in their way. One could also fall victim to abuse from anarchists for a mere 'failure to understand or unwillingness to accept' anarchist doctrine. Lest one be naive enough, as I once was, to unquestioningly accept their conclusions and 'conditions' arguments, there is nothing but smooth sailing. But, once one begins to question the basis of their programs, one thereby opens oneself up to "scorn", "contempt", "lashes", "branding", and, no doubt, to other forms of abuse. What ever happened to patient and logically consistent arguments?2 'Branding the capitalist unionism of the A.F. of L. as a "capitalist contrivance . . . calculated to block the path of [true] unionism' ... Not very many unionists in advanced Western countries express interest in discarding capitalism, which is the mission A.P. insinuated on 'true' unionism. Big unions voice interests in the future of capitalism, have forged partnerships between capital and labor, and have invested strike and pension funds in capitalist enterprises. As unions grew up and bureaucratized, they figured out how to make a business out of trade unionism. Simultaneously, the SLP figured out how to make a business out of anarchism disguised as socialism. Joining the AFLcould sometimes put money into a worker's pocket, whereas joining the SLP was more likely to drain it. Competing business interests were the source of the conflict, and fierce competition led to the slander of the AFL by the SLP. If the AFL had been all wrong, Sam Gompers would not have asked Engels to intervene in the controversy between himself and Lucien Sanial of the SLP in 1891 (See Appendices 1 and 2). De Leon's claim that the AFL was calculated to block the path of [true] unionism gave the SLP concept of unionism far too much credit as 'a boon to workers that didn't deserve to be blocked.'3 ... '"this fruit first ripened on the soil of America."' There goes the national chauvinism again, as though 'the soil of America' was something special. Maybe that phrase was useful in welcoming immigrants of the time into the Party.The Party Destructive Here we learn the purpose of the De Leonist party of labor:4 '"It does not lie in a political organization, that is, a party, to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. Both the 'reason' for a political party and its 'structure' unfit it for such work....."' Did anyone propose 'taking and holding the means of production' to be the purpose of a workers' party? Why did De Leon find it necessary to repudiate that particular idea, and was it just an example of setting up a straw man only to demolish it in order to impress the politically naive? Many who have flirted with socialist or progressive ideas may have suspected that a workers' party is supposed to take and hold 'something', but were not exactly sure what that 'something' might be. Then along comes De Leon to proclaim with great authority that 'the means of production are to be taken and held'. Not only that, but, 'it is not the party that is fit for taking and holding the means of production, but rather the economic organization of labor.' In that manner, De Leon could hope to replace 'workers' normal desire to wield influence in government' with 'desire to take over the means of production', and all in the name of Marx.5 '"The 'reason' for a political party unfits it to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. ... the 'reason' for a political movement is the exigencies of the bourgeois shell in which the Social Revolution must partly shape its course."' One of the ideas De Leon developed was: 'Unions are suited to run the means of production, while the workers' party is suited for shutting down the bourgeois state.' Any unity of duties, purpose, and connection between the union and party of labor was minimized. The text so far has propagandized that: 'The destructive party and state are bourgeois and are to be abolished, self-destruct, or commit suicide; but the union is constructive and will carry on production after the revolution.' This definition of duties could conceivably appeal to some people, but it's quite different from the Marxian dictum (DFI 4, pp. 444-5): "That in the militant state of the working class, its economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united." And what could best encapsulate that unity better than the struggle to share work by lawfully reducing hours of labor?6 '"The governmental administration of capitalism is the State, the government proper (that institution is purely political). Political power, in the language of Marx, is merely the organized power of the capitalist class to oppress, to curb, to keep the working class in subjection."' Once again, De Leon gave us a black and white way of looking at politics, but whoever thinks that the state is purely political hasn't done their homework. One could also read the October 1890 letter to Schmidt in which Engels emphatically stated that "Force (that is, state power) is also an economic power!" De Leon's second sentence is a good example of a half-truth, because Marx did not make state power a one-way street in which capitalist state power over the proletariat could not be turned around; rather, Marx left it open for any class to oppress any other. To the master of deceit, however, 'state power has always been capitalist state power over the working class', and 'contemplating the reverse is absurd.' In the "Communist Manifesto", however, Marx and Engels wrote (MESW I, p. 127): "When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class." How could a so-called revolutionary extract a sentence from this paragraph and make it appear as though political power is a one way street without committing gross fraud? But what did SLP leaders care about truth when they had a revolution to sell?7 '"The bourgeois shell in which the Social Revolution must partly shape its course dictates the setting up of a body that shall contest the possession of the political robber burg by the capitalist class. The reason for such initial tactics also dictates their ultimate goal - THE RAZING TO THE GROUND OF THE ROBBER BURG OF CAPITALIST TYRANNY."' When I first read this excerpt, it didn't seem possible that the De Leonist party would be Marxist enough to want to contest the possession of the state, for, possession is not ordinarilycontested unless a party plans to use the state, as Engels wrote in "The Housing Question", etc. As I read on, however, it became apparent that the De Leonist purpose for possessing the state was to enable its immediate abolition. Their contest for possession was only to be a part of the initial tactics of the party, and then, for reasons insufficiently explained, the initial tactics were to be scrapped and replaced with the tactic of 'the abolition of the state.' Exactly how the 'initial tactic' of contesting possession 'dictates the ultimate goal of abolition'unfortunately was not explained here, but maybe somewhere in the archives of anarchist thought it was explained at least as 'logically' as the 'conditions' argument was. So, here's another field of research for someone brave enough to enter the swamp.8 '"The ... mechanical establishments of production ... are all to be 'taken,' ... for the purpose of being 'held'; for the purpose of improving and enlarging all the good that is latent in them... in order to save them for civilization. It is exactly the reverse with the 'political power.' That is to be taken for the purpose of ABOLISHING IT. It follows herefrom that the goal of thepolitical movement of labor is purely DESTRUCTIVE."' If the goal of the political movement is purely destructive, why would Engels have suggested concentrating means of production into the hands of that very 'destructive' state? To enable one heck of a Luddite smash-up-the-means-of-production party after taking state power? I doubt it. Once again, De Leon was being entirely un-Marxist by suggesting that 'all forms of state power are forms of capitalist state power', and that 'state power is purely political, destructive, bourgeois, and is to be abolished.' De Leon also was at odds with his previous philosophy when he was in the Nationalist movement and advocated nationalizing industries, i.e., concentrating all means of production into the hands of government.9 '"Suppose that, at some election, the classconscious political arm of Labor were to sweep the field ... in such a landslide fashion that the capitalist election officials ... couldn't ... count us out; suppose that ... our candidates were installed; ... what ... should there be for them to do? Simply TO ADJOURN THEMSELVES, ON THE SPOT ... Their work would be done by disbanding."' The idea of waiting for an election to abolish the state is a pacifist absurdity. The abolition of the state is a sweeping destruction of a great number of institutions, and involves atraumatic disruption of a great number of lives. The state would undoubtedly fight back to preserve itself, dooming would-be revolutionaries to defeat.10 '"The political movement of labor, that, in the event of triumph, would prolong its existence a second after triumph, would be a usurpation ... or the signal for a social catastrophe ... if the political triumph did not find the working class of the land industrially organized ... in full possession of the plants of production and distribution ... to assume the integral conduct of the productive powers of the land."' Implied by this scenario is a possible division of interests between the political and economic arms of the workers' movement, a division possibly on the scale of that betweencommunists and anarchists. But, since, according to the De Leonist scenario, 'the industrial union is the only body that can set on foot the true political party of labor', and since 'the party has no other mandate than to abolish the government', what desire to usurp union control over the economy could possibly exist? Isn't the party supposed to totally submit to the desires of the unions, given that the union sets the party on foot? Why even bring up this idea of usurpation? The De Leonist scenario of giving up state power after a proletarian political victory was strongly opposed by Lenin in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (LCW 28, p. 261): "Whoever sincerely shared the Marxist view that the state is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and who has at all reflected upon this truth, could never have reached the absurd conclusion that the proletarian organisations capable of defeating finance capital must not transform themselves into state organisations. It was this point that betrayed the petty bourgeois who believes that "after all is said and done" the state is something outside classes or above classes. Indeed, why should the proletariat, "one class", be permitted to wage unremitting war on capital, which rules not only over the proletariat, but over the whole people, over the whole petty bourgeoisie, over all the peasants, yet this proletariat, this "one class", is not to be permitted to transform its organisation into a state organisation? Because the petty bourgeois is afraid of the class struggle, and does not carry it to its logical conclusion, to its main object. "Kautsky has got himself completely mixed up and has given himself away entirely. Mark you, he himself admits that Europe is heading for decisive battles between capital and labour, and that the old methods of economic and political struggle of the proletariat are inadequate. But these old methods were precisely the utilisation of bourgeois democracy. It therefore follows...? "But Kautsky is afraid to think of what follows." Kautsky allegedly feared thinking about the proletarian dictatorship when workers retained state power, instead of appeasing the bourgeoisie and giving it up, as the SLP wants them to.11 ""The catastrophe would be instantaneous. The plants of production and distribution having remained in capitalist hands, production would be instantly blocked."" Using De Leonist standards, a situation in which 'the party was victorious while the union remained unorganized' could mean that 'the party had not been set on foot by the union that had not yet been fully organized.' In that case, such a party would want to hold onto power after the electoral victory. The catastrophe which would thereby result was defined by De Leon as: the blocking of that all-important production. The De Leonist revolution has a lot of interlocking elements: 1) the workers' party having to be the brainchild of the economic movement, responsible to it alone, 2) the political victoryidentified as the victory of the workers' party at the ballot box, 3) the readiness of the economic movement to take over the means of production at the moment of electoral victory, 4) the catastrophe of production being blocked if the economic movement isn't ready to take over the means of production at the moment of electoral victory, 5) the other possibility that the political movement would usurp the duties of the economic movement if it didn't disband itself and the state at its moment of victory. So many possibilities in an increasingly complicated scenario.12 ""The 'reason' for a political movement obviously unfits it to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. What the political movement 'moves into' is not the shops, but the robber burg of capitalism - for the purpose of dismantling it." ("Socialist Reconstruction of Society.") "Note here the close parallel between this last quoted statement and Marx's declaration that the purpose of the "Communal Constitution [was to] become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence."" Could Marx have written anything as vague or unintelligible as that? Compare what A.P. 'quoted' to what Marx really wrote in "The Civil War in France" (MESW II, p. 221): "The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The Communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralised Government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communes of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which still would remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal, and therefore strictly responsible agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organised by the Communal Constitution and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence. While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible agents of society. Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it properly. On the other hand, nothing could be more foreign to spirit of the Commune than to supersede universal suffrage by hierarchic investiture." Let's look at one of the many interesting statements: 'The few but important functions which still would remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal, and therefore strictly responsible agents.' After the crushing of the Commune, and before two months had yet to pass, unnamed falsifiers were already at work intentionally misstating the experience and intentions of the Commune, apparently stating that all of the functions of the central government were to be suppressed. We shall see if the SLP would also have suppressed the Commune's central government. To rebut the advocates of autonomy, Marx also wrote: 'The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organised by the Communal Constitution and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power' ... Compare this to what A.P. 'extracted' (p. 34): ... 'the purpose of the "Communal Constitution [was to] become a reality by the destruction of the State power"' ... Whatever that purpose was imputed to be, A.P.'s version stated that 'the purpose of the Communal Constitution [was to] become a reality', whereas Marx wrote that 'the unity of the nation was ... to become a reality'. Was A.P. merely the victim of a 'bad translation'? I don't see how anyone who read Marx's version could have interpreted or translated it any other way. But, because anarchists promote the autonomy of every entity, it's likely that they couldn't let it be known that the Communal Constitution was to unify the nation under a central state authority, and certainly not destroy authority. Much of the literature of the SLP written by Arnold Petersen praised Daniel De Leon's alleged accomplishments and promoted his theories. Some of the prose was similar to the kind of adulation associated with cults of personality that were fostered around Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others. Perhaps the SLP filled a real psychological need for some members and sympathizers by providing a 'hero' or 'savior' for them to admire and/or worship. On the subject of SLP literature, I drafted the following to a member back in 1977: 'On the subject of politics, the "Paris Commune" and the "Communist Manifesto" seem to be our only good translations. Our "18th Brumaire", "Class Struggles in France", and "Gotha Program" are not so much translations as they are hatchet jobs. Just try for yourself, for instance, to understand the SLP version of "Class Struggles in France". You would probably more be 'awed by the genius of Marx' than to be able to understand him. The SLP version is downright incomprehensible compared with any other publisher's version. A line by line comparison will show that Henry Kuhn {the translator} wanted more to prevent comprehension than to promote it.' It's no mere coincidence that all of the butchered quotes in SLP literature leaned in a direction that enabled anarchist conclusions to be drawn, and gave the politically naive all the more incentive to abolish the state. The old state power that the Commune broke was well described by Marx in the third part of his "Civil War in France" (MESW II, pp. 217-19):"III "On the dawn of the 18th of March, Paris arose to the thunderburst of "Vive la Commune!" What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalising to the bourgeois mind? ""The proletarians of Paris," said the Central Committee in its manifesto of the 18th March, "amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs.... They have understood that it is their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power." "But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. "The centralised State power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature - organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour, - originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle-class society as a mighty weapon in its struggles against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of mediaeval rubbish, seigniorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the eighteenth century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hindrances to the superstructure of the modern State edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France. During the subsequent regimes the Government, placed under parliamentary control - that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes - became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labour, the State power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public force organised for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the State power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830, resulting in the transfer of Government from the landlords to the capitalists, transformed it from the more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois Republicans, who, in the name of the Revolution of February {1848}, took the State power, used it for the June massacres, in order to convince the working class that "social" republic meant the Republic ensuring their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bourgeois and landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of Government to the bourgeois "Republicans." However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois Republicans had, from the front, to fall back to the rear of the "Party of Order" - a combination formed by all the rival fractions and factions of the appropriating class in their now openly declared antagonism to the producing classes. The proper form of their joint-stock Government was the Parliamentary Republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its President. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate insult toward the "vile multitude." If the Parliamentary Republic, as M. Thiers said, "divided them (the different fractions of the ruling class) least," it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the State power, were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of the proletariat, they now used that State power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war-engine of capital against labour. In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time to divest their own parliamentary stronghold - the National Assembly - one by one, of all its own means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the "Party-of-Order" Republic was the Second Empire. "The Empire, with the coup d'état for its certificate of birth, and the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labour. It professed to save the working class by breaking down Parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of Government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory. In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the saviour of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The State power, apparently soaring high above society, was at the same time itself the greatest scandal of that society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin. Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the State power which nascent middle-class society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of labour by capital." A.P. could not have missed the fact that the old state power that the Commune broke up did not merely consist of parliaments and constituent assemblies - but, rather, the old state power was the 'standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature - organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour ... a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes ... the national war-engine of capital against labour ... and ... the greatest scandal of that society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions.' Marx's history of class struggle was written in a way that made history interesting, enabling us to understand what kind of state institutions were smashed up in 1871, and how especially rotten ripe for overthrow was that 'saviour of society'. A.P. continued (pp. 34-6):p. 34:"Rise of Industrial Union Power. ""And, now, [continued De Leon] as to the 'structure' of a political party. Look closely into that, and the fact cannot escape you that its structure also unfits the political movement to 'take and hold' the machinery of production. The disability flows inevitably from the 'reason' for politics. The 'reason' for a political party, we have seen, is to contend with capitalism upon its own special field - the field that determines the fate of political power. It follows that the structure of a political party must be determined by the capitalist governmental system of territorial demarcations - a system that the Socialist Republic casts off like a slough that society shall have outgrown. {1} Take Congress, for instance, whether Senate or House of Representatives. The unit of the congressional representation is purely politically geographic; it is arbitrary. The structure of the congressional district reflects the purpose of the capitalist State - political, that is, class tyranny over class. The thought of production is absent, wholly so, from the congressional demarcations. It cannot be otherwise. Congress - not being a central administration of the productive forces of the land, but the organized power of the capitalist class for oppression {2} - ITS constituent bodies can have no trace of a purpose to administer production. {3} Shoemakers, bricklayers, miners, railroad men, together with the workers in all manner of other fractions of industries, are, accordingly, jumbled together in each separate congressional district. Accordingly, the political organization of labor intended to capture a congressional district is wholly unfit to 'take and hold' the plants of industry. The only organization fit for that is the organization of the several industries themselves - and they are not subject to political lines of demarcations; they mock all such arbitrary, imaginary lines. The central administrative organ of the Socialist Republic - exactly the opposite of the central power of capitalism, not being the organized power of a ruling class for oppression, in short, not being political, but exclusively administrative of the producing forces of the land - ITS constituent bodies must be exclusively industrial. {4} The artillery may support the cavalry; the cavalry may support the infantry of an army in the act of final triumph; in the act, however, of 'taking and holding' the nation's plants of production, the political organization of the working class can give no help. Its mission will have come to an end just before the consummation of that consummating act of labor's emancipation. The form of central authority to which the political organization had to adapt itself and consequently looked, {5} will have ceased to be. As the slough shed by the serpent that immediately reappears in its new skin, the Political State will have been shed, and society will simultaneously appear in its new administrative garb. The mining, the railroad, the textile, the building industries, down or up the line, each of these, regardless of former political boundaries, will be the constituencies of that new central authority the rough scaffolding of which was raised last week in Chicago. Where the General Executive Board of the Industrial Union of the nation will sit there will be the nation's capital. Like the flimsy cardhouses that children raise, the present political governments of counties, of states, aye, of the city on the Potomac herself, will tumble down, their places taken by the central and the subordinate administrative organs of the nation's industrial forces. Obviously, not the 'structure' of the POLITICAL movement, but the structure of the ECONOMIC movement is fit for the task, to 'take and hold' the industrial administration of the country's productive activity - the only thing worth 'taking and holding.'" ("Socialist Reconstruction of Society.")" In this chapter, A.P. quoted De Leon's theories for the structure of the political party of labor. Two main clues to a definition of that structure include:1 ... '"the structure of a political party must be determined by the capitalist governmental system of territorial demarcations"' ...... and ...5 '"The form of central authority to which the political organization had to adapt itself and consequently looked, will have ceased to be."' The territorial demarcations aspect of Party structure means organizing people into city, county, state, region, and national groups, with smaller subdivisions electing representatives to larger ones. De Leon apparently didn't find it necessary for the form of the workers' party to differ from the form of the capitalist state. There is a certain quality of logic to the theory that, 'since the Party and the state are both to share the same fate of being discarded, why not share the same form and structure?' It can also be argued that the forms of organization adopted by states and parties have served to protect and perpetuate those institutions. If a party uses the same organizational form as the state and other political parties, and yet its ultimate goal is so different from the others, could the difference in goals be significant enough to reflect upon its structural form? Could one not argue that the wide variance in final goals could possibly reflect on the form of a party? While the role of the SLP is the abolition of the state at the ballot box, one of the roles of the democratic state is to allow for all of the various parties to engage in contests, or elections, for control and maintenance of the state. A comparison of the roles of the SLP and that of the state in contemporary democratic times would reveal that both have their own peaceful goals with respect to one another. On the one hand, the state has allowed the Party to exist for a long time, even if the goal of the Party is the abolition of the state and itself. On the other hand, the Party, at least as late as the 1970's, put up candidates for President and other political offices, and, without the voting public investigating too deeply, they could be led to conclude that the Party has the same electoral goals as the vast bulk of the rest of the parties. At the forefront of their campaigns, Party candidates have often put forth criticisms of capitalism and politics, they have put forth the SIU plan for reorganizing society, and have often saved the abolition of the state at the ballot box for last. De Leon wrote that, like other political parties, the SLP, in its original set of tactics, could do nothing other than to peacefully contest control of the state. The outward appearance of entering a political campaign lends weight to the argument that the Party has a stake in the continuation of politics; and, with an allegedly socialist platform, a continuation of politics, but with working class supremacy in the state. But, since the ultimate goal of the Party is not for workers to maintain possession of the state, the Party only initially maintains the appearance as though its purpose is to take and hold state power, but, at some point in the process of people familiarizing themselves with the Party, they eventually become aware that its end goal is far more radical than what most people are ready to accept. The contradiction between the real goal and the initially apparent goal of the Party could create stress for members. It takes quite an act of courage to come right out in public and admit that the campaigns they run, if successful, would culminate with the abolition of the Party, the state, political process, laws, and everything else that political people use. Even the least sophisticated among the public might be tempted to ask: "Why run for office if your only political purpose is to abolish the office to which you are elected?" The member could always reply: "To make use of public forums in which to carry on socialist propaganda." To which a skeptical citizen might reply, "If such a self-destructive program is socialism, then give me anything but socialism."SLP Form and Function If the SLP was intended to be a model of what a self-destructing party of labor should look like, we should take a closer look at its structure, as illuminated somewhat by its Constitution.Article I of the 1977 SLP Constitution is entitled "Management", and contains but one section which merely states (p. 4): "Section 1. The affairs of the Socialist Labor Party shall be conducted by the National Executive Committee, the National Office, the state organizations, the local organizations, the Sections, the National Conventions, and the membership." On the national level back in the 1970's, the Party Convention elected a National Secretary and an Editor, each for four-year terms. The ten-member National Executive Committee was elected by the members of their respective ten regions for one-year terms. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens elect Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Congress. Elected officials appoint cabinets and all of their helpers, and the NS and Editor got to appoint or hire all of their own help. When the NS was re-elected, no machinery existed by which another candidate could debate the NS, or other candidates, or carry on an election campaign, and the pre-selected successor was usually approved without significant opposition. I remember the first time I had a chance to vote in a national election in the SLP, and I didn't have the faintest idea for whom I was voting. All I can remember was going through the motions of a process which was familiar, due to my having voted a few times before in ordinary elections. Though I had heard and met with many of the LOCAL Party speakers, officers, and candidates, I knew nothing of the National Officer whose election I was being asked to approve. One of the problems with the election of only two National Officers was that they then had lots of power over their wage-slaves who had little choice but to carry out the agendas of those two officials. The SLP's NO staff acted as a body of wage-slaves for the NS and Editor to manage. In this respect, the Party set a poor example for the abolition of wage-slavery. And, without a union, the staff probably thought twice before any of them dared to openly criticize the NS. The Party's structure was an approximate reflection of the structure of the government that the SLP is sworn to abolish. Section 13 of Article V of the 1977 Party Constitution provided for the NEC members ... (p. 30): "(k) To initiate discussion with the Sections within their respective regions on the contents of each NEC session shortly after the holding of such session. Expenses incurred shall be borne by the National Office." Of the two national districts in which I had membership, I do not recall any such meetings, though it very well could be that such meetings regularly took place in the eight otherdistricts.Though the Party's organizational form has changed since the mid-seventies, the administration of the Party back then - between the annual sessions of the NEC and the National Conventions - was conducted by a Subcommittee of five members elected by the NEC, and living "within practical commuting distance from national headquarters", though no details of this election process in my old SLP Constitution were printed. From Article V of the 1977 SLP Constitution (p. 30): "Section 16: The NEC Subcommittee in all its activities shall work in conjunction with the National Secretary, who shall attend all its meetings and have a voice but no vote in all its proceedings." During the 2+ years I worked at the NO, rumor had it that the historical role of both the Subcommittee and the NEC was that of a rubber stamp for the agenda of the National Secretary. The 1977 Edition of the SLP Constitution shows nothing at all with relation to National Office employees, with the exception that Section 17 of Article V prohibited a "permanent paid employee" from being on the NEC Subcommittee. If there were other bodies of rules associated with the duties, rights and privileges of NO employees, I never saw or heard about them. At the NO that I knew, the National Secretary got to hire and fire all of the employees of the National Office, even the WP staffers, since there was no other editor except the NS at the time. Instead of the NO being their unit of organization, all of the workers in the NO got organized into Sections local to their residences, which, in the period of my involvement, meant that one worker might have gone to Section San Francisco, while the bulk of us formed into Section Santa Clara. Even though I attended nearly all of my Section meetings, I never saw theNS or the Subcommittee members at the same meetings. They seemed to be in a class by themselves, exempt from those mostly boring Section meetings. Where was their exemption written in the rules? Rank-and-file NO wage-slaves, in the meantime, got to be treated like any other member in any other Section out in the parison to the First International It's instructive to compare the structures of the First International and the Commune with that of the SLP. Perhaps for the sin of having been grounded in a lower level of technological development than what we now enjoy, a lot of things that evolved in the 19th century remained irrelevant to SLP leaders. The Party's literature didn't say a word about the organizational form of the First International Workingmen's Association, nor why the Party's form varies so much from the FI, especially if the Party allegedly evolved from it. The International eliminated internal offices that were comparable to the offices of President and Vice-President, and did its work within the context of committees. The annual Congress of Delegates was the ultimate power of the organization. It elected a General Council to carry on the International's affairs between Congresses, and it fixed the seat of the Council, usually London. Each Delegate could represent up to five hundred rank and file members. The Congress could also expel any of the members of the General Council, or even the whole Council. The Congress of the First International could relocate the seat of the GC to wherever it wanted, based upon the political conditions of a country and the qualifications of members local to the seat. In the interests of fairness, Marx often proposed a European country for the seat of the General Council, but due to persecution of the Reds in Europe, the GC always sat in London as a precaution. Later, due to growing friction between the internationalists, the reformers, and the anarchists, the Hague Congress of 1872 moved the GC to New York. After the move, the International gradually disintegrated and officially disbanded in 1876. Some of the members of the old International later helped to form the American SLP. The GC also elected a Subcommittee to carry on some day-to-day business and for special tasks, such as the preparation of proclamations and addresses, etc. Marx sat on theSubcommittee during the 8 years of the International's heyday, drew up many of its documents and discussed them with the Subcommittee before presenting them to the General Councilfor their consideration. All of the statements, resolutions and manifestos of the International bore the signatures of the members of the GC. Members of the General Council were equals, and elected their own functionaries from among themselves. They could also add to their own numbers at any time, and when Engels moved from Manchester to London in 1870, he was added as well. The International did not interfere in the internal affairs of its constituent bodies, but the annual Congress could expelsections, branches and federations if necessary. The whole arrangement had the advantage of flexibility that even made the police admire it. In a footnote at the end of their 1872 "Fictitious Splits in the International", Marx and Engels wrote (MESW II, p. 286): "In the report on the Defaure law, Sacase, the Rural Assembly deputy, attacks above all the International's "organisation." He positively hates that organisation. After having verified "the mounting popularity of this formidable Association," he goes on to say: "This Association rejects . . . the shady practices of the sects that preceded it. Its organisation was created and modified quite openly. Because of the power of this organisation . . . it has steadily extended its sphere of activity and influence. It is expanding throughout the world." Then he gives a "short description of the organisation" and concludes: "Such is, in its wise unity, . . . the plan of this vast organisation. Its strength lies in its very conception. It also rests in its numerous adherents, who are linked by their common activities, and, lastly, in the invincible impulse that drives them to action."" In a letter to Schweitzer in September of 1868, Marx complained about the election of a president to the German union, for, what with the other two elected independent bodies - thecommittee elected by the trades, and the congress elected by the locals - Marx considered the position of president superfluous (M+TU, p. 43). During the earlier days of the First International, there was a position called "President", but on Marx's motion, that post was eliminated. Two years later, at the Basle Congress of 1869, it was proposed that (DFI 2, p. 372, fn. #212): ... "all local sections should abolish the post of president in their sections." In an October 1868 letter to Schweitzer about the structure of the German trade unions, Marx wrote (MESC, p. 202): "Without going further into details I only want to remark that centralist organisation, although very suitable for secret societies and sectarian movements, goes against the nature of trade unions. Even if it were possible - I state outright that it is impossible - it would not be desirable, and least of all in Germany. Here where the worker's life is regulated from childhood on by bureaucracy and he himself believes in the authorities, in the bodies appointed over him, he must be taught before all else to walk by himself. ... "Lassalle committed a gross blunder when he took over the "president elected by universal suffrage" from the French Constitution of 1852. And, moreover, in a trade union movement! The latter revolves largely around money questions and you will soon discover that here all dictatorship comes to an end." In a November 1877 letter to Wilhelm Blos, Marx advised against authoritarian structures in workers' parties (MESC, p. 291): "When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the Rules. (Later on Lassalle exerted his influence in the opposite direction.)" Article VII of the 1977 SLP Constitution described the duties of the alleged ultimate power of the Party (p. 36): "Section 11. The National Convention shall frame the national Platform, decide the form of organization, and investigate and decide all difficulties within the Party submitted to the Convention." A good question could be asked: Who gets to submit the list of 'difficulties within the Party'? The delegates, the NS, the NEC, or who?Party and Power In his letter to Turati of January 1894, Engels wrote about the relation of the party to political power, its immediate aims, and the interests of the working classes (MESC, pp. 444-5): "Ever since 1848 the tactics that have brought the Socialists the greatest successes were those set forth in the Communist Manifesto: ""In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they [the Communists] always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.... The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement." "They therefore take an active part in every phase of the struggle between the two classes without ever losing sight of the fact that these phases are just so many stages leading to the first great goal: the conquest of political power by the proletariat as a means for reorganising society. Their place is in the ranks of those fighting to achieve immediate results in the interests of the working class. They accept all these political or social achievements, but merely as payments on account. Accordingly they consider every revolutionary or progressive movement as a step in the direction in which they themselves are moving. It is their special mission to impel the other revolutionary movements onward and, should one of them be victorious, to safeguard the interests of the proletariat. Those tactics, which never lose sight of the grand objective, spare Socialists the disappointment that inevitably will befall the other and less clear-sighted parties, be they pure republicans or sentimental Socialists, who mistake what is a mere stage for the final goal of their forward march." In "The Documents of the First International", the General Council in 1872 adopted Article 8 into the General Rules, written by Marx in response to the repeated disruptive activities of the anarchists (DFI 5, p. 426): "In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes. - This constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end - the abolition of classes. - The combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of its exploiters. - The lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economical monopolies and for enslaving labour. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the proletariat." Novices who go to the SLP for an explanation of why things in the world are as bad as they are may initially feel enlightened (as I once did) in the fields of Marxian economics, the class struggle, and the materialist conception of history; but those who want to progress beyond mere intellectual exercises into executing a plan of action will find their efforts frustrated. Because the SLP would have no role after the abolition of the state, there is not much incentive for the politically-minded to join a Party whose only function after victory is the shutting down of both itself and the state. In fact, the definition of the Party as a political entity is negated by its own program, as it contradicts Engels' statement: ... "each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state." If the Party does not set out to 'establish its rule in the state', then it is hard to justify its definition of itself as a political party. To consider what any of this has to do with what's going on in today's world: People who work for socially progressive organizations might find it instructive to compare their structures with that of the First International:1) Is there a single individual or self-appointing group that has ultimate responsibility for hiring and firing?2) Are the terms of employment of each worker considered to be secret and private matters?3) Are the compensation packages of the 'executives' known to all other workers?4) Is there a significant gap between the compensation of the most humble worker and that of the highest paid 'executive'?5) Are the rank-and-file workers represented by a union, or is union activity frowned upon?6) Does it seem like the opinions of volunteers and the lowest paid workers are mostly overlooked when important decisions are being made?7) Is there an atmosphere of freedom of communication with everyone, inside and outside of the organization, or is the flow of information a one-way street?8) Is there a sense that outsiders are merely being sold a product?9) Is there a sense of interest in the basic human rights of all workers, paid and unpaid?10) Is the organization run collectively, or is there an individual or small group that makes all of the decisions? There is linkage between bureaucracy, censorship, secrecy, cults of personality, and sectarianism, all of which complement one another in the goal of maintaining scams, always at the expense of honesty, intellectual freedom, and mass involvement in decision making. What chance would bureaucracy, secrecy and sectarianism have if censorship were absent, and the rank and file allowed to fully discuss the other three elements? Likewise if any other element was missing while the others were in force. To be effective, the five elements usually work together in order for fraud to succeed in carrying the day in service to systems of human betrayal.A False Dichotomy A.P. continued to quote De Leon (p. 35):2 '"The structure of the congressional district reflects the purpose of the capitalist State - political, that is, class tyranny over class. The thought of production is absent, wholly so, from the congressional demarcations."' Regarding 'class tyranny over class': If, during the past 200 years, legislatures have done little more than legislate class oppression, the producing classes would have been ground into dust a long time ago from the combined political oppression and economic exploitation. If one looks at what is being legislated today, much of it turns out to be administration of production in terms of protection of both consumers and workers. Just exactly where is 'class tyranny over class' legislated? Let us note that the anarchist De Leon of 1905 happened to contradict an earlier Professor De Leon of Columbia University, as reported in an account of his speech in the Workmen's Advocate of August 3, 1889: "Nationalists look upon government not as an oppressive force ... but as emanating from the people. It is the very self of the nation. Nationalists, therefore, deem it necessary, and demand that all industries shall be of national organization, because these are the people's interests, and, consequently, the concerns of the government." There's quite a bit of difference between regarding the state as the mere instrument of 'class tyranny over class', and, in his earlier writings, 'not as an oppressive force'. What to believe? Much of the work of the legislature is involved with alleviating the worst abuses of economic inequalities as a result of pressure from below. In Engels' October 1890 letter to Schmidt, the text around "Code Napoleon" touched upon that very point (MESW III, p. 492): "Similarly with law. As soon as the new division of labour which creates professional lawyers becomes necessary, another new and independent sphere is opened up which, for all its general dependence on production and trade, has also a special capacity for reacting upon these spheres. In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic condition and be its expression, but must also be an internally coherent expression which does not, owing to inner contradictions, reduce itself to nought. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions suffers increasingly. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class - this in itself would offend the "conception of right." Even in the Code Napoleon the pure, consistent conception of right held by the revolutionary bourgeoisie of 1792-96 is already adulterated in many ways, and, in so far as it is embodied there, has daily to undergo all sorts of attenuations owing to the rising power of the proletariat. This does not prevent the Code Napoleon from being the statute book which serves as the basis of every new code of law in every part of the world. Thus to a great extent the course of the "development of right" consists only, first, in the attempt to do away with the contradictions arising from the direct translation of economic relations into legal principles, and to establish a harmonious system of law, and then in the repeated breaches made in the system by the influence and compulsion of further economic development, which involves it in further contradictions. (I am speaking here for the moment only of civil law.)" Nowadays there are laws regulating workplace safety, the length of the work week, the quality of food and drugs, health, education, welfare, civil rights, etc. Maybe anarchists would like a reform-free world in which the employers could pollute, endanger and enslave to their heart's content. Then maybe workers could be driven into the arms of the anarchists and led tosmash the state. In their efforts to 'liberate' us, anarchists have offered us little better than contradictory sets of lies.3 '"Congress - not being a central administration of the productive forces of the land, but the organized power of the capitalist class for oppression - ITS constituent bodies can have no trace of a purpose to administer production. Shoemakers, bricklayers, miners, railroad men, together with the workers in all manner of other fractions of industries, are, accordingly, jumbled together in each separate congressional district. Accordingly, the political organization of labor intended to capture a congressional district is wholly unfit to 'take and hold' the plants of industry."' That was another of De Leon's straw man arguments. His whole definition of the socialist revolution revolved around this very radical sounding, but totally ahistorical, 'taking and holding of means of production, with the industrial union fit to take and hold, and the political organization unfit'. In what revolutionary situations have workers won by taking and holding industries? None that I know of.4 '"The central administrative organ of the Socialist Republic - exactly the opposite of the central power of capitalism, not being the organized power of a ruling class for oppression, in short, not being political, but exclusively administrative of the producing forces of the land - ITS constituent bodies must be exclusively industrial."' From lies to fairy tales: After his complete denial of the power of the state to protect both workers and consumers, De Leon took us to dreamland - the classless, stateless administration of things right after the summary execution of capitalism and the state. 'Abolishing capitalism and the state' appeals to those who are infected with ultra-radicalism, and misleads the naive who sincerely want to break with human betrayal. Capitalism is so strong in this country as a whole that people are not about to give it up for bizarre systems that diverse groups propose as alternatives. A.P. concluded Part I of "PD vs. D+D" with (pp. 36-38):p. 36:"Revolutionary Tactics. "This completes the important contribution made by De Leon to Marxism. There remains but to quote De Leon's own summary of the foregoing principles with particular respect to their application to the field of tactics: ""The bona-fide or revolutionary Socialist movement needs the political as well as the economic organization of labor, the former for propaganda and to conduct the struggle for the conquest of the capitalist-controlled Political State upon the civilized plane of the ballot; {1} the latter as the only conceivable force with which to back up the ballot, without which force all balloting is moonshine, and which force is essential for the ultimate lockout of the capitalist. {2} Without the political organization, the Labor or Socialist movement could not attain the hour of its triumph; and without the economic organization, the day of its triumph would be the day of its defeat. {3} Without the economic organization, the movement would attract and breed the pure and simple politician, who would debauch and sell out the working class; and without the political organization, the movement would attract and breed the agent provocateur, who would assassinate the movement." "De Leon emphasized tirelessly the importance of political action. He met unflinchingly the challenge hurled by the Anarchist that the overthrow of capitalism involved economic action only and that political action was useless or worse than useless. {4} With equal zest did he take up the taunt of the pure and simple politician that since the Political State was to be demolished anyhow, it was useless to conquer it in the first place. {5} Marx, in a brilliant passage in one of his shorter essays, effectively answers Anarchist and politician alike. "The revolution as such [said Marx] - the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old conditions - is a political act. [There goes the Anarchist down!] But without a revolution, Socialism cannot be enforced. It requires this political act, so far as it has need of the process of destruction and dissolution. But where its organizing activity begins, where its proper aim, its soul, emerges, there Socialism casts away the political hull." [And down goes the pure and simple politician!] {6} ("On the King of Prussia and Social Reform.")" All that A.P. could dig up from Marx to support his assertion that 'The political movement is destructive, and the economic movement constructive' was that same old 1844 quote used so often in SLP literature; but, on the testimony of Engels in the Van Patten letter of 1883, it was written before he and Marx had mutually agreed on their theory of the future dissolution of the political state, including the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Earlier in this chapter, A.P. quoted De Leon:1 '"The bona-fide or revolutionary Socialist movement needs the political ... organization of labor ... for propaganda and to conduct the struggle for the conquest of the capitalist-controlled Political State upon the civilized plane of the ballot"' ... De Leon took the term 'Political State' totally out of Marxist context by refusing to admit that the proletarian dictatorship was also to be a form of political state, as demonstrated in Engels' article "On Authority". There the term 'political state' was used in the sense of 'a state in the process of dissolution'. To say that 'the Political State is capitalist-controlled' totally excludes the possibility of worker control over the state, which historically has been the purpose and result of the struggle for universal suffrage.2 ... '"the economic organization of labor ... the only conceivable force with which to back up the ballot, without which force all balloting is moonshine, and which force is essential for the ultimate lockout of the capitalist."' Where has De Leon's 'back up the ballot with the economic organization of labor' scenario ever come close to being realized? I can't think of a place. In the old Soviet Union, Lenin credited trade unions with assisting in the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution. Was there any evidence that they used the tactic of the lockout of the capitalist class during their struggle for power, and that this tactic assisted their victory? In the Collected Works of Lenin, nowhere have I seen the lockout of the capitalist class even hinted at. On the other hand, lockouts of workers by capitalists were written about as having been countered by go-slow strikes and demonstrations, but it was not intended that those tactics were to be pushed so militantly that workers would be put in danger.3 '"Without the economic organization, the movement would attract and breed the pure and simple politician, who would debauch and sell out the working class; and without the political organization, the movement would attract and breed the agent provocateur, who would assassinate the movement."' De Leon may have found a good rhetorical way to rise above 'deviations' away from his brand of revolutionism, but his message looks like just another 'doom and gloom scenario' designed to herd the politically naive into supporting his program. Revolutionary movements often use scare tactics. The message is: 'Workers had better revolt the way we tell them to, or else they will suffer perpetual defeat!'4 'De Leon emphasized tirelessly the importance of political action. He met unflinchingly the challenge hurled by the Anarchist that the overthrow of capitalism involved economic actiononly and that political action was useless or worse than useless.' It isn't too difficult to point out the absurdity of trying to 'overthrow capitalism by economic means alone'. Obviously, this was yet another straw man argument that didn't take a genius to demolish. Marx considered 'economic means' to be little more than boycotts, strikes, slowdowns, demonstrations, etc., during which time, workers could starve. Bosses could have all of their necessities brought in from elsewhere, and they could use their resources to harass and defeat workers. But, when speaking of 'overthrowing', Marx didn't speak in vague terms like 'overthrowing capitalism'. In his writings, the act of overthrowing was always associated with specific governments, usually either monarchies or red republics. De Leon might not have been joking aloud when he tried to differentiate his revolutionary movement from anarchy by professing a faith in the 'political action' of a mere electoral victory. It was all such a joke, but a joke that has fooled quite a few.5 'With equal zest did he take up the taunt of the pure and simple politician that since the Political State was to be demolished anyhow, it was useless to conquer it in the first place.' To allege that 'the pure and simple politician' would claim that it was 'useless to conquer the state' makes absolutely no sense. What is the meaning of a political career but for parties and politicians to get control of the state and try to keep it in their hands forever? Even the relatively enlightened reformer would only allow for the eventual dying out of the state, but certainly not its demolition, which is rather what an anarchist would recommend. De Leon would obviously not allow would-be radicals to consider any other than state-smashing scenarios in order to keep workers away from thinking about being political.6 ""The revolution as such [said Marx] - the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old conditions - is a political act. [There goes the Anarchist down!] But without a revolution, Socialism cannot be enforced. It requires this political act, so far as it has need of the process of destruction and dissolution. But where its organizing activity begins, where its proper aim, its soul, emerges, there Socialism casts away the political hull." [And down goes the pure and simple politician!] ("On the King of Prussia and Social Reform.")" This quote, which had to have been one of A.P.'s all-time favorites, was also misused in his Preface to "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", analyzed in Part C of this book. A.P.'s "revolution as such" does not seem to have originated from a pen of Marx or Engels, as no trace of such a phrase could be found in the Collected Works. Though the "state as such" appeared 16 times in the Collected Works, one of its last appearances (contained within a refutation of anarchist ideology) indicates that M+E must have regarded the "state as such" to be a fiction (me23.466): "Thus it is not the Bonapartist State, the Prussian or Russian State that has to be overthrown, but an abstract State, the State as such, a State that nowhere exists." Once again, as far as translations go, the one used by A.P. was pretty bad. Let us compare A.P.'s to the one provided by "The Marx Library" (Marx, Early Writings, Vintage Press, 1975, p. 420): "All revolution - the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order - is a political act. But without revolution socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organizing functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges, socialism throws itspolitical mask aside." Notice the difference between A.P.'s 'Socialism cannot be enforced' and "socialism cannot be made possible". In A.P.'s version, 'cannot be enforced' implies that socialism was just lingering in the background like an unfulfilled desire, or like a ballot box victory that the capitalist class refused to honor, causing such a victory to hang in limbo, waiting to be realized by a revolution, 'i.e., by workers taking over industries', as De Leonists would want us to think of revolution; whereas "cannot be made possible" implies that socialism absolutely would not exist, and would be nowhere to be found, and would be hiding under no rock, until ... socialism was realized by the revolution, or, by the revolutionary party taking state power. Notice also how 'destruction and dissolution' took on the character of an option in A.P.'s version: 'Socialism ... requires this political act, so far as it has need of the process of destruction and dissolution.' If socialism didn't need any 'destruction and dissolution', then, accordingly, socialism also wouldn't need the political act of revolution; whereas, in the Vintage Press edition: 'socialism ... stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution.' In the Vintage Press edition, 'destruction and dissolution' was as essential to socialism as was the revolution. To be kind, one could suggest that there were some subtle, but important, 'differences in translations'. But, instead of being kind to A.P.'s memory, I can't help but conclude that he butchered Marx's quote to conform to his anarcho-pacifist ideology. Notice also the difference between 'political hull' and 'political mask'. My dictionary fails to find a similarity between hull and mask, but that could be its fault, for it's only 2,662 pages long. It's not impossible to imagine someone making a mask from a giant seed (or hull) from a plant or tree. 'Casting away the political hull' bears far more of a resemblance to 'abolishing the state' than does 'throwing aside its political mask', which sounds more like a multi-sided concept of revolution, such as economic and political, constructive and destructive, simultaneously. Thus, the Vintage Press translation was far more consistent with the rest of the paragraph than was A.P.'s translation. If A.P. had a conscience, he surely would have paid attention to the very next paragraph of Marx's essay, which was written exactly with his kind of 'literary' efforts in mind (Ibid.): "Such lengthy perorations were necessary to break through the tissue of errors concealed in a single newspaper column. Not every reader possesses the education and the time necessary to get to grips with such literary swindles. In view of this does not our anonymous 'Prussian' owe it to the reading public to give up writing on political and social themes and to refrain from making declamatory statements on the situation in Germany, in order to devote himself to a conscientious analysis of his own situation?" Unfortunately for his followers, A.P. is no longer available 'to devote himself to a conscientious analysis of his own situation', but, if we are lucky, his successors will mount a noble effort. A.P. continued in Part Two of his pamphlet with chapters devoted to dissuading readers away from Russian revolutionary techniques.(End Part D. Continued in Part E.)Left Wing Lies Part E Ken Ellis PART FOUR: "PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY VS. DICTATORSHIPS AND DESPOTISM" REVISITED"Socialist "Dictatorship" Defined." "The shallow-minded, the special pleader of unsound principles, take great pains - and not a little pleasure - in insisting that the Marxian concept of proletarian rule, referred to as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," and De Leon's theory of Industrial Unionism and working class government based on industrial constituencies, are necessarily, and under any and all circumstances, antithetical. Nothing could be further from the truth. {1} I have already shown that the essence of Proletarian Dictatorship, as understood by Marx and the great expounders of Marxism, is supreme power by the working class, to the exclusion of all capitalist and bourgeois elements, and with parliaments and constituent assemblies utterly destroyed.* "* "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, stripped of its Latin, scientific and historico-philosophical dress, and clothed in simple language, means that only a certain class, and that the industrial workers, especially the workers in large factories, is able to lead the general body of the exploited masses in their fight to end capitalist exploitation." - Lenin, "Communist Saturdays." {2} "All of this is not only implied in the concept of De Leon's Industrial Union and industrial government, but is, indeed, an indispensable condition for the realization of the Socialist or Industrial Republic. {3} Marx, as De Leon often emphasized, is not a quotation nor yet a string of quotations. {4} Every word he uttered is pregnant with meaning, and his utterances were always directed by a central principle, and definitely based upon definite conditions. {5} The central principle was, of course, the emancipation of the working class, i.e., the victory of the proletariat, and the conditions were naturally such as were at hand. {6} There is, in itself, no potent charm in the phrase "Proletarian Dictatorship." Marx used it as the one best suited at the time to express his idea of working class supreme power, stripped of the fetters of the capitalist Political State, and all the better suited because it brought into contrast the actual fact (though denied in theory) of capitalist economic dictatorship. {7} De Leon himself used the phrase on at least one occasion, a fact which proves that it was primarily used by Socialist writers merely to express the complete negation of capitalist political and economic power. {8} In an editorial written in 1910 (i.e., long after he had worked out his Industrial Union and government theory) De Leon employs the phrase. Discussing the arrogant action of the then New York Governor, Chas. E. Hughes, in practically ordering the legislature to do his bidding, and emphasizing the attempted usurpation of power by the Executive, De Leon concludes: ""Besides the economic conditions to warrant the phenomenon, it requires two things for the dictatorship - the dictator and the dumb dictatorees. The latter seem to be there; the former is taking shape. {9} And yet bourgeois pundits are learnedly explaining the necessity of the dual legislative chamber system. They had better try and save their own precious legislatures. Close behind the bourgeois dictator comes the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. . . ." {10} "What does De Leon here imply by the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"? Clearly nothing more than that the "precious legislatures" will be superseded by the organized power of the proletariat, i.e., the integral Industrial Union. And it was in the identical sense (modified by the conditions of the time) that Marx used it, and, indeed, it was in the same sense that Lenin used it, modified by the conditions in Russia. When Marx referred to the "Proletarian Dictatorship," capitalism as a whole was still in process of development, that is, it was as yet far from having exhausted the possibilities for normal growth. We know that the working class (the proletariat) in continental Europe constituted a minority. In "The Gotha Program" Marx says: "......'the working population' in Germany consists, in its majority, of peasants and not of proletarians." And Lenin, in his" ... {11} There is a lot we can analyze in this chapter in which A.P. used the word 'condition' or its plural six times, perhaps to make sure that those of us with 'dull intellects' didn't miss the point.Proletarian 'Economic' Dictatorship A.P. began his treatise on dictatorship with:1 'The shallow-minded, the special pleader of unsound principles, take great pains - and not a little pleasure - in insisting that the Marxian concept of proletarian rule, referred to as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," and De Leon's theory of Industrial Unionism ... are necessarily, and under any and all circumstances, antithetical. Nothing could be further from the truth.' The grain of truth in this argument is that the dictatorship of the proletariat and Socialist Industrial Unionism are not exactly antithetical to each other. A more exact antithesis appears when comparing the SIU theory with the state ownership theory. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the Marxist theory, but, in a breach of good ethics, the state ownership theory was substituted by A.P. and De Leon in place of the Marxist theory, and then they criticized the state ownership theory, calling it the Marxist theory all along. The state ownership theory holds that socialism will commence with the victory of the workers' party at the ballot box. Workers would use their newly won electoral victory toconcentrate means of production into the hands of the state. But, as with so many ideas, there is a theoretical snag here, for, right after the electoral victory of the workers' party, the elements of force in the state remain outside of the control of socialists, preventing anything more communistic than nationalization of industries with compensation, similar to what A.P. described in his Preface to Engels' "Socialism: From Utopia to Science", where A.P. wrote: "It was the genius of De Leon which perceived that to transform private capitalist property into "State property" amounted to consolidating all economic power into the hands of a few capitalists" ... A.P. and De Leon were correct to imply that state capitalism, or state socialism, orstate ownership, yield nothing of value to the working class, but not for the reasons they gave. The state socialist theory has a connection to Marxism in the following way: In Marx's day, few countries outside of England and America could be considered democracies, and monarchies were the predominant form of European political rule. Marx's revolutionary scenario called for European monarchies to be replaced with a universal proletarian dictatorshipmore or less simultaneously, enabling workers to use their political supremacy to expropriate land, factories and means of production, some with compensation, and some without.Following a battle in which workers emerged with the full power of the state, expropriation without compensation would be irresistible. Mere electoral victories in democracies, however, do not confer upon workers' parties the requisite force for expropriation without compensation. Lenin indicated that expropriation of capitalist property might be possible after mere elections, but only for countries without special state apparatuses that stood above the people, such as what the American republic was supposed to have been like in the 19th century. Without a bureaucratic-military machine that stood above the people, Lenin and Marx theorized that electorally victorious workers' parties could concentrate means of production into the hands of workers' democracies without government resistance. Lenin thought that by World War One, however, the era of republics with as allegedly poorly developed state apparatuses as the North American model had disappeared, never to be repeated again in history, ensuring the necessity of smashing every bourgeois state from then on, democratic or not. But, people in republics never bought the idea of concentrating means of production into the hands of their governments, nor did they ever buy the idea of smashing democracies in order to accomplish that revolution. Concentrating means of production into the hands of workers' states as mainsprings of social progress eventually lost all credibility, as 75 years of experience with state ownership in the old Soviet Union and most of the rest of the old Soviet Bloc demonstrated the worthlessness of that program. Rejection of state ownership will probably continue as a trend, and will someday spread to what few communist experiments remain to be replaced with capitalist democracies. Communism was based upon a miscalculation of Marx and Engels, who remained wedded to 'violent replacements of monarchies with democracies conferring the requisite power for expropriation without compensation', in spite of increasing willingness of monarchies divest themselves of political absolutism and to peacefully adopt democratic features. Because of theoretical snags in Marxism, socialist doctrine in democracies remained confused, unpopular and sectarian. Some socialist and/or communist sects maintain the necessity of smashing bourgeois rule, democratic or not, which is as absurd and alienating as any blunder imaginable. Mainsprings of human progress will not be found in a state ownership model, nor in an anarchist 'replacement of the state with an administration of things', nor in any other scenario that includes the forceful abolition of private property. It may very well be time for a post-Marxist synthesis which recognizes that, in a republic, democracy can be welcomed as an opportunity for lower classes to wield influence, if only they had a party that represented their interests, and if the party wasn't encumbered with the kind of confusion that results from program elements like 'expropriation of the rich', or the 'abolition of the state'. A.P. did a bad job of quoting Lenin in a footnote:2 "* "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, stripped of its Latin, scientific and historico-philosophical dress, and clothed in simple language, means that only a certain class, and that the industrial workers, especially the workers in large factories, is able to lead the general body of the exploited masses in their fight to end capitalist exploitation." - Lenin, "Communist Saturdays." At first glance, this quote looks fairly decent, if just a little weak. Let's see if the fault lay in A.P.'s incapacity to capture the intent of Lenin's words from "A Great Beginning" (LCW 29, pp. 420-1): "If we translate the Latin, scientific, historico-philosophical term "dictatorship of the proletariat" into simpler language, it means just the following: "Only a definite class, namely, the urban workers and the factory, industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of the working and exploited people in the struggle to throw off the yoke of capital, in actually carrying it out, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new, socialist social system and in the entire struggle for the complete abolition of classes. (Let us observe in parenthesis that the only scientific distinction between socialism and communism is that the first term implies the first stage of the new society arising out of capitalism, while the second implies the next and higher stage.) "The mistake the "Berne" yellow International makes is that its leaders accept the class struggle and the leading role of the proletariat only in word and are afraid to think it out to its logical conclusion. They are afraid of that inevitable conclusion which particularly terrifies the bourgeoisie, and which is absolutely unacceptable to them. They are afraid to admit that the dictatorship of the proletariat is also a period of class struggle, which is inevitable as long as classes have not been abolished, and which changes in form, being particularly fierce and particularly peculiar in the period immediately following the overthrow of capital. The proletariat does not cease the class struggle after it has captured political power, but continues it until classes are abolished - of course, under different circumstances, in different form and by different means. "And what does the "abolition of classes" mean? All those who call themselves socialists recognise this as the ultimate goal of socialism, but by no means all give thought to its significance. Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy. "Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of ownership; it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinction between manual workers and brain workers. This requires a very long period of time. In order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be taken in developing the productive forces; it is necessary to overcome the resistance (frequently passive, which is particularly stubborn and particularly difficult to overcome) of the numerous survivals of small-scale production; it is necessary to overcome the enormous force of habit and conservatism which are connected with these survivals." Lenin never strayed from the theory that the abolition of classes was to be carried out by means of force, expropriation, and similar violent means during the proletarian dictatorship. In other writings, Lenin mentioned the reduction in the length of the working day as such a desirable reform that its implementation was to be integrated into the domestic policies of Soviet Union, but it was never regarded as a working class tactic for abolishing class distinctions. Be that as it may, let us review how well A.P. represented Lenin's views. Where Lenin wrote: "the urban workers and the factory, industrial workers in general" A.P. 'translated': 'the industrial workers, especially the workers in large factories' Notice the difference in emphasis? What happened to the urban workers in A.P.'s version? Lost in translation? 'Perhaps.' And what about the difference between 'especially' and 'in general'. More translation problems? 'Why not?' Secondly, where Lenin wrote, all in the same sentence: ... 'is able to lead the whole mass of the working and exploited people in the struggle to throw off the yoke of capital, in actually carrying it out, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new, socialist social system and in the entire struggle for the complete abolition of classes.' A.P., or the translator he was a poor victim of, substituted: 'is able to lead the general body of the exploited masses in their fight to end capitalist exploitation.' A.P. or his translator left out more than three lines of class struggle-related text, and only included phrases about economic exploitation. Maybe this is one more example of the 'fully authenticated quotations' so proudly advertised on the inside of the SLP pamphlet's jacket cover. Authenticated by whom? Bakunin? Throughout "PD vs. D+D", A.P. included not a word of his own about the abolition of class distinctions, which Lenin and Marx described as the 'ultimate goal of socialism': "the ultimate goal is the destruction of the wage system" ... "The German workers' party strives to abolish wage labour and hence class distinctions by introducing co-operative production into industry and agriculture, and on a national scale" ... And yet, the goal of the anarchists - the abolition of the state - has been repeated in one form or another over and over in thispamphlet, and in other SLP literature. Did the Party neglect the abolition of class distinctions because, as in Lenin's version, it had too much to do with the hated policy of the proletariat toward the capitalists during its dictatorship? Or, was the abolition of class distinctions ignored because the 'abolition of the state' sounds like it can be accomplished in a much shorter period of time than the abolition of class distinctions, and gives such quick relief?3 'I have already shown that the essence of Proletarian Dictatorship, as understood by Marx and the great expounders of Marxism, is supreme power by the working class, to the exclusion of all capitalist and bourgeois elements, and with parliaments and constituent assemblies utterly destroyed.* All of this is not only implied in the concept of De Leon's Industrial Union and industrial government, but is, indeed, an indispensable condition for the realization of the Socialist or Industrial Republic.' Repeated throughout "PD vs. D+D" was a lavish number of empty phrases like 'supreme power', which help the lower classes understand nothing. 'Supreme power' is vague and devoid of any strategic or tactical content; 'the exclusion of all capitalist and bourgeois elements' phrase is vague in that it doesn't mention what the capitalists would be excluded from; and 'parliaments and constituent assemblies utterly destroyed' means the abolition of the state, as the peaceful anarchists perceive that task. If this was the meaning of A.P.'s 'Proletarian Dictatorship', and 'implied in the concept of De Leon's Industrial Union', then they were all equally useless to the lower classes. In contrast, Lenin gave a much different perspective onproletarian dictatorship in "'Left-Wing' Communism - an Infantile Disorder" (LCW 31, pp. 23-4): "* The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased ten-fold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism, continuously, hourly, daily, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will." The dictatorship of the proletariat for the newly emerged Soviet Union in 1917 became nothing less than a civil war against the upper classes at home, and a war of defense against invading counter-revolutionaries, but the pacifist revolutionary A.P. was reluctant to bring up the topic of class aggression and warfare.4 'Marx, as De Leon often emphasized, is not a quotation nor yet a string of quotations.' For the SLP, Marx was never anything more than a string of butchered quotations, or quotes out of context. If A.P. hadn't so badly misused the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the work of writing this book would have been a lot more difficult; but, lucky for me, A.P. 'documented' his work well enough for me to track the quotes down, and a comparison with the originals should be enough to convince any honest skeptic that A.P.'s misuse of the quotes revealed nothing less than an intent to deceive his readers.5 'Every word he uttered is pregnant with meaning, and his utterances were always directed by a central principle, and definitely based upon definite conditions.' Here A.P. praised Marx clumsily, which is the only way he could have hypocritically praised someone he loathed. But, in a vain attempt to enlist the aid of Marx to lend credibility to hisanarchist version of socialism, A.P. excerpted Marx out of context in order to deceive the reader into believing that 'the SLP is Marxist and socialist'. It was necessary for A.P. to laboriously research and extract those few quotes from Marx, Engels and Lenin that were capable of being twisted into something that vaguely supported anarchist ideology, and to occasionally praise Marx, Engels and Lenin along the way. As to their 'utterances' having been 'definitely based upon definite conditions', a great deal of A.P.'s work from this chapteronwards in "PD vs. D+D" had precisely to do with 'conditions', as in: 'Marx, Engels and Lenin had only incomplete or half-baked ideas about politics due to living in eras or countries laboring under backward conditions, a proposition that contained more than a grain of truth, so our analysis must be done with great care.6 'The central principle was, of course, the emancipation of the working class, i.e., the victory of the proletariat, and the conditions were naturally such as were at hand.' Except for the irrelevant 'conditions' addendum, this is true. The "complete emancipation" of the workers was used 36 times in the Collected Works, demonstrating the importance of that concept, especially during the heyday of the First International. But, varying 'conditions' were not intended to result in equally variable programs (me44.183): "Since the sections of the working class in different countries find themselves in different conditions of development, it necessarily follows that their theoretical notions, which reflect the real movement, should also diverge. The community of action, however, called into life by the International Working Men's Association, the exchange of ideas facilitated by the public organs of the different national sections, and the direct debates at the General Congresses, are sure by and by to engender a common theoretical programme. Consequently, it belongs not to the functions of the General Council to subject the programme of the Alliance to a critical examination. It is not our task to find out whether it is or is not an adequate expression of the proletarian movement. All we have to know is whether its general tendency does not run against the general tendency of our Association, viz., the complete emancipation of the working class."7 'There is, in itself, no potent charm in the phrase "Proletarian Dictatorship." Marx used it as the one best suited at the time to express his idea of working class supreme power, stripped of the capitalist Political State, and all the better suited because it brought into contrast the actual fact (though denied in theory) of capitalist economic dictatorship.' Where did Marx write anything approximating that? How was the alleged economic dictatorship manifested, and who was denying that theory? If only A.P. had given us examples, it might have helped us to understand such a confusing term, for, what is an economy but the civil and non-coerced process of exchanging money for commodities and services, commodities and services for money, commodities for commodities, etc.? So, where does the dictatorship come in? Except for the special cases of drugs and hazardous materials, no one tells bosses or workers what they can buy or sell. The phrase "economic dictatorship" could not be found in the CD of Collected Works. Capitalist economic freedom (rather than dictatorship) makes sense as a free market in which consumers and producers freely produce, buy and sell anything they want. The idea of thefree marketplace is an indispensable part of capitalist ideology: The fewer the impediments to the flow of money and commodities, then the better the economy is considered to be working. So, how can anyone make sense out of an 'economic dictatorship'? It sounds almost like a system in which workers have to wait in long lines for hours on end to buy a loaf of bread, as in the old Soviet Bloc. An economic dictatorship also conjures a scenario where consumers are forced to apply for permits to buy or sell anything, or are forced to buy commodities only from sources approved by the state, but those policies considerably defeat the 'freedom to buy and sell' that is so much a part of the ideology of free market systems. In general, the notion of a 'capitalist economic dictatorship' contradicts itself, as in an oxymoron. It applies the dictatorship idea of 'unswerving obedience to the rules, or else' to a marketplace concept that carries along with it a tremendous amount of 'freedom baggage'. A.P. called the political state a 'capitalist Political State', no doubt hoping to impress upon the politically less-aware the bogus idea that 'all states are capitalist states', even thedictatorship of the proletariat! To have assembled the words 'working class supreme power, stripped of the fetters of the capitalist Political State', A.P. must have had precisely that false notion in mind. In his article entitled "On Authority", Engels clarified the historical context of the 'political state' (MESW II, pp. 378-9): "All socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? "Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction." From what Engels wrote, one can easily see that his idea of the 'political state' includes the transitional state known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. So, it's no wonder that A.P. was so interested in diverting the lower classes away from it, just like any other kind of state. As Lozovsky observed (M+TU, p. 155): ... "the anarchists see no difference between a dictatorship that shoots landlords and capitalists and a dictatorship that shoots workers." And now for a shocking revelation:8 'De Leon himself used the phrase on at least one occasion, a fact which proves that it was primarily used by Socialist writers merely to express the complete negation of capitalist political and economic power.' If I were an anarchist in the SLP tradition, I would have found it quite shocking to learn that De Leon used the phrase 'dictatorship of the proletariat', but would have been relieved at seeing A.P.'s explanation that: 'All it meant for De Leon was the abolition of capitalism and the state.' For the first time in a long time, A.P. admitted that the capitalist class has political as well as economic power. A check of every context in which political power was written about in hispamphlet revealed that A.P. invalidated political power as worthless or dangerous to workers, or else he described it as a tool for only the capitalist class to use. But 'nowhere did capitalists exert their political power in the form of a political dictatorship', for then someone might think 'a capitalist political dictatorship is best counteracted by a proletarian political dictatorship'; but, it was fine for capitalists to exert their economic power in the form of a capitalist economic dictatorship because 'then it would be fine for workers to counteract that by means of a proletarian economic dictatorship, i.e., the SIU.' Clever reversals of theories like this one were pretty well thought out by anarchist falsifiers.9 ... '"it requires two things for the dictatorship - the dictator and the dumb dictatorees. The latter seem to be there; the former is taking shape."' An interesting part of De Leon's refutation of Governor Hughes was his reference to the 'dumb dictatorees who seem to be there'. Perhaps De Leon was betraying the attitude of Party intellectuals towards rank and file workers, an attitude that survived over a century. If people have to be dumb to accept SLP theories and repeat them for the rest of their lives, then such dumbness also makes them fit for SLP bureaucrats to dictate to.10 ""They had better try and save their own precious legislatures. Close behind the bourgeois dictator comes the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. . . ."" 'What does De Leon here imply by the phrase "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"? Clearly nothing more than that the "precious legislatures" will be superseded by the organized power of the proletariat, i.e., the integral Industrial Union. And it was in the identical sense (modified by the conditions of the time) that Marx used it, and, indeed, it was in the same sense that Lenin used it, modified by the conditions in Russia.' Modified by 'the conditions of the time' or not, Marx, Engels and Lenin wanted the political rule of the bourgeoisie to be replaced by the political rule of the proletariat, peacefully or not, and A.P. knew it. His 'conditions' theory also seemed to imply that: 'The conditions experienced by Marx and Lenin in their respective countries were lowly enough for the dictatorship of the proletariat idea to be relevant back then, but not to the USA in this century.' In a very important sense, A.P.'s theory is a half-truth. Because Marx lived in England during the last half of his life, he had the opportunity to observe it as closely as Lenin observed Russia. Marx's analysis of agriculture in England enabled him to predict the increasing supremacy of capital and wage-labor for the future of European agriculture, and for many more world economies over the course of time. In a November 1877 letter "To the Editorial Board of the Otechestvenniye Zapiski", Marx quoted one of his own passages from "Capital" (MESC, p. 293): "The chapter on primitive accumulation does not claim to do more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist economic system emerged from the womb of the feudal economic system. It therefore describes the historical process which by divorcing the producers from their means of production converts them into wage workers (proletarians in the modern sense of the word) while it converts the owners of the means of production into capitalists. In that history "all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments, when great masses of men are forcibly torn from their traditional means of production and of subsistence, suddenly hurled on the labour market. But the basis of this whole development is the expropriation of the peasants. England is so far the only country where this has been carried through completely ... but all the countries of Western Europe are going through the same development" ... "If Russia wants to become a capitalist nation after the example of the West-European countries - and during the last few years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction - she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians; and then, once drawn into the whirlpool of the capitalist economy, she will have to endure its inexorable laws like other profane nations." A.P.'s swindle consisted of this: Portray the politics of both Russia and the USA as similarly democratic, and portray the two countries as economically opposite, instead of the other way around, i.e., the way it really was - politically opposite, but economically similar. A.P. used the alleged polar opposition of the two countries in the economic sphere to 'prove' that 'America is ripe for economic revolution, while Russia is not', instead of using the real facts of the old political situations to conclude the obvious, viz., that America already had its democratic revolution, while Russia badly needed to replace its monarchy with democracy, peacefully or not.David vs. Goliath Revisited A.P. began to flesh out his reasons why a proletarian dictatorship would not be appropriate to American conditions:11 'When Marx referred to the "Proletarian Dictatorship," capitalism as a whole was still in process of development, that is, it was as yet far from having exhausted the possibilities fornormal growth. We know that the working class (the proletariat) in continental Europe constituted a minority. In "The Gotha Program" Marx says: "......'the working population' in Germany consists, in its majority, of peasants and not of proletarians." And Lenin, in his' ... The last few words of A.P.'s passage mark the place where, in 1976, due to the plethora of quotes I suspected A.P. had taken entirely out of context, and which quotes I could look up, I began my analysis of his "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorship and Despotism" pamphlet. The results of that portion of my analysis can be found in Part B of this book. To briefly recap my analysis: A.P. quoted Marx to the effect that 'the wage-earning class in Germany was smaller than the peasant class'. That's fine. No argument. The argument began with what A.P. went on to do with the fact of a numerically weak working class in those times and places; for, the next few pages of his pamphlet went on to formulate a theory of proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry and the middle classes, whereas Marx, Engels and Lenin had plainly enough written about alliances between workers, peasants and middle classes against the uppermost classes. A.P.'s contradictory theory, it turns out, happens to mimic Bakuninist theory, but the proletariat of Russia allegedly wanting to take on all of those peasants and small business people who outnumbered the proletariat is no better than a fantasy. Workers and peasants would obviously have found it much more feasible to take on a relatively small class of rich capitalists. A.P. then observed that 'the peasantry - farmers owning little more than their own small plots - barely exists in present-day America', which is relatively true, but he also asserted that the rest of the American middle class was small and weak, which was and is false. A recent factoid on CNN declared that 98% of American businesses employ 100 employees or fewer, and another statistic shows that small businesseses employ nearly half the workforce, but A.P. thought he could get away with mixing together the relatively small class of peasants with the rest of the middle classes for the purpose of his 'class analysis'. As a result of his redefinition of the proletarian dictatorship as a dictatorship over the middle classes, and his downplaying of the roles of the American middle classes to virtually nothing, he thought he could trick the reader into agreeing that a 'proletarian dictatorship over the barely existing peasantry and middle classes in America is not necessary.' In spite of the fraud behind A.P.'s class analysis, it's not hard to agree that a 'proletarian dictatorship is definitely not necessary in the many republics like the USA.' A.P.'s final conclusion was correct, but for all of the wrong reasons, a pattern that was repeated more than once. In his sentence about the development of capitalism, A.P. seems to have concluded that the end of its possibilities for 'normal growth' in the USA had arrived by the time he wrote "PD vs. D+D" in 1931. If the growth that had occurred before 1931 had met A.P.'s specifications for what constituted 'normal growth', that would also imply that all of the growth we've experienced since 1931 has been abnormal. Did A.P. claim that the USA was sufficiently developed technologically to proceed to classless, stateless society because, by 1931, the entire work-force had been replaced with robots, and a working class for bosses to exploit no longer existed? And that all we have ever had to do since 1931 is to talk to a robot in our native tongue, and whatever needs to be done gets done, period, even the design and construction of better robots? And that, because all the disgusting work is done by robots, no one is forced by economic necessity to go to work, and all commodities are free? Silly questions. But, the particular levels of unemployment and suffering we will endure before we become conscious enough to do something real about the total replacement of human labor has yet to be determined. In order for A.P. to make a good case for denying the need for a proletarian dictatorial transition period in the USA, he drew the line at 1931 as the point in history when capitalism had fully developed. But, I don't think I would trust the same theoretician who gave us the 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry' with the additional theory that: 'By 1931, the USA had reached the level of technology necessary for a direct passage from capitalism to the classless, stateless administration of things.' If another 70 or so years of astounding technological developments without a revolution are not enough to prove to A.P.'s followers that he was wrong on this point, then they must have a lot more patience with A.P. than I did.Conditions, Forms and Dictatorship On pages 43-44 of "PD vs. D+D", A.P. tackled the issue of labor productivity:p. 43:"From Capitalism to Socialism. "Throughout the works of Marx, Engels, and also of Lenin, the point is stressed that upon seizure of power, and after suppressing the state and all that thereby hangs, the important task of the proletariat is to develop the productive powers. {1} The lack of industrial development is one of the cornerstones, in fact, the chief one, upon which rests the particular application of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" by Marx, Engels and Lenin. {2} In the "Communist Manifesto" it is repeatedly emphasized that one of the primary tasks of the victorious proletariat is to "increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." {3} In Lenin's "The Soviets at Work" it is pointed out that "government can be seized in a few days; insurrections put down in a few weeks; but to increase the power of labor to produce wealth requires years." {4} In his "The Great Initiative" or "Communist Saturdays" Lenin says: "The productivity of labor is the most important factor in the victory of the new social order." {5} We may then logically deduce that where the conditions are the direct opposite of those which confronted Marx in 1871, and Lenin in Russia in 1917, the transition period mentioned by Marx and Engels is not only unnecessary, but it is even impossible, in reason, to conceive of it. {6} Hence, the question of insuring a successful transfer of power from capitalism to Socialism reduces itself, first of all, to one of form. {7} The lower the industrial development, the more that form (in the event of proletarian victory) must partake of the nature of the old society; the higher the industrial development, the more the form must partake of the nature of the new society; in the perfect flowering of capitalist industrial development the form, i.e., the instrument or means of revolution, merges logically into the very governmental structure of the new society itself, or, in other words, the Industrial Union becomes the very framework of the Socialist Industrial Republic of Labor. {8} And to have worked out this revolutionary theory, in strictest conformity with the basic principles of Marxism, constitutes the great De Leon's vital contribution to Marxian science." {9} From the first sentences of this chapter, A.P. tried to establish a causative connection between the underdevelopment of an economy and the need for a proletarian dictatorship. He proposed that: 'Less developed countries need a transition period of proletarian dictatorship, but highly developed countries like the USA do not.' In an examination of the points made by A.P., we shall see if the quotes that he used to 'prove' his thesis actually did. A.P.'s first sentence called for closer inspection (p. 43):1 'Throughout the works of Marx, Engels, and also of Lenin, the point is stressed that upon seizure of power, and after suppressing the state and all that thereby hangs, the importanttask of the proletariat is to develop the productive powers.' 'Suppressing the state' is an anarchist aspect of SLP philosophy. According to Lenin, what the best of the anarchists and the Marxists shared in relation to theories of the state was 'the smashing of the old bourgeois state machinery'. In "The State and Revolution", Lenin defined some differences between Marxists and anarchists (LCW 25, p. 489): "The distinction between the Marxists and the anarchists is this: (1) The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognise that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as a result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished. (2) The former recognise that after the proletariat has won political power it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organisation of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilising the present state. The anarchists reject this." While Marx observed the old state machine get replaced with new, working class state machinery during the Paris Commune, the anarchists ignored that experience, or falsified itshistory to support their philosophy of directly replacing states with an administration of things, bypassing transition periods and proletarian dictatorships. In his 1873 article entitled "The Bakuninists at work", Engels scrutinized the 'victory' of the Bakuninist "International Alliance of Socialist Democracy": After the anarchists abolished the state apparatus of Alcoy, Spain in September of 1872, they later allowed bourgeois rule to re-emerge. Engels read in the Anarchist paper "Solidarity": "Our friends in Alcoy, numbering 5,000, are masters of the situation." Engels commented (NW 153, p.136): "And what did these "masters" do with their situation? "Here the report of the Alliance and its newspaper leave us in the lurch and we have to rely on the ordinary newspaper reports. From these we learn that a "Committee of Public Safety", that is, a revolutionary government, was then set up in Alcoy. To be sure, at their Congress at Saint-Imier (Switzerland), on September 15, 1872, the members of the Alliance decided that "any organisation of political, so-called provisional or revolutionary authority, can be nothing but a new fraud and would be just as dangerous for the proletariat as any of the now existing governments". The members of the Spanish Federal Commission, meeting at Alcoy, had moreover done everything they could to get this resolution adopted also by the Congress of the Spanish Section of the International. And yet we find that Severino Albarracin, a member of this Commission, and, according to some reports, also Francisco Tomas, its secretary, became members of the Committee of Public Safety, that provisional and revolutionary government of Alcoy. "And what did this Committee of Public Safety do? What measures did it adopt to bring about "the immediate and complete emancipation of the workers"? It forbade any man to leave the city, although women were allowed to do so, provided they ... had a pass! The enemies of all authority re-introducing a pass! Everything else was utter confusion, inactivity and helplessness." For ten more pages, Engels recounted the anarchists' blunders and vacillations around holding state power. In their confusion, they alternately served on committees that condemned authoritarian behavior, or served as revolutionary state officials. Not long after the anarchist victory in Alcoy, troops arrived to restore authority, and the anarchists negotiated a general amnesty for themselves.2 ... 'upon seizure of power ... the important task of the proletariat is to develop the productive powers. The lack of industrial development is one of the cornerstones, in fact, the chief one, upon which rests the particular application of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" by Marx, Engels and Lenin.' A.P.'s first sentence incorrectly stressed the alleged hyper-importance of developing productive powers, and his second sentence was a big lie. The chief cornerstone of the dictatorship of the proletariat was the need for the proletariat, after capturing political power, to counteract the resistance of the upper classes. A.P.'s attempt to link proletarian dictatorship to the level of productive forces falls flat, as little relation between the two ideas can be found in the works of Marx and Engels. If any theme was repeated by M+E, it was that the productive forces had already sufficiently developed so that the first stage of communism (the proletarian dictatorship) could be attained, even in the relatively underdeveloped economic conditions of over a century ago. In his 1873 "The Housing Question", Engels wrote (MESW II, p. 312): "And it is precisely this industrial revolution which has raised the productive power of human labour to such a high level that - for the first time in the history of mankind - the possibility exists, given a rational division of labour among all, of producing not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve fund, but also of leaving each individual sufficient leisure so that what is really worth preserving in historically inherited culture - science, art, forms of intercourse - may not only be preserved but converted from a monopoly of the ruling class into the common property of the whole of society, and may be further developed. And here is the decisive point: as soon as the productive power of human labour has risen to this height, every excuse disappears for the existence of a ruling class." Engels believed that the productive forces had developed sufficiently in his own time for society to put an end to the political rule of capital, and that replacing capitalist political supremacy with proletarian supremacy would assure sufficient leisure time for everyone to develop their higher powers.3 "In the "Communist Manifesto" it is repeatedly emphasized that one of the primary tasks of the victorious proletariat is to "increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." Wouldn't it have been a little contradictory for Marx and Engels to have 'repeatedly emphasized increasing the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible' after having written many times about crises of over-production? In their 1848 "Communist Manifesto", it appears that Marx and Engels wrote about 'increasing the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible' exactly once, as opposed to A.P.'s notion of 'repeatedly' (MESW I, pp. 113-4): "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. ... "It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. ... "The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. "But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modern working class - the proletarians. "In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. "Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race." If this doesn't mean that we live in an era of overproduction, then I must not have learned to read at all. Years after the Manifesto was written, Marx went on to thoroughly define the value of a commodity, including the value of labor power. The Manifesto continued (Ibid., p. 119): "The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty-bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him." Just as the modern welfare state feeds the surplus population. The nice thing about reading Marx and Engels is that so much of what they wrote back then remains just as true today. Due to overproduction, the cheapening of the value of labor power, and the tyrannical rule of the monarchies of Europe, Marx and Engels proposed revolution and proletarian dictatorshipto solve workers' problems.4 "In Lenin's "The Soviets at Work" it is pointed out that "government can be seized in a few days; insurrections put down in a few weeks; but to increase the power of labor to produce wealth requires years."" A.P. quoted from what he called "The Soviets at Work", but that particular passage could only be found in "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government", written in 1918. According to the Index to the Collected Works, Lenin didn't write anything by the name A.P. gave. Maybe it was a 'problem with translations', or maybe shortening and changing the name was a way for A.P. to save word space, but the passage was tracked down anyway, and here is its context (LCW 27, p. 257):"RAISING THE PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOUR "In every socialist revolution, after the proletariat has solved the problem of capturing power, and to the extent that the task of expropriating the expropriators and suppressing their resistance has been carried out in the main, there necessarily comes to the forefront the fundamental task of creating a social system superior to capitalism, namely, raising the productivity of labour, and in this connection (and for this purpose) securing better organisation of labour. Our Soviet state is precisely in the position where, thanks to the victories over the exploiters - from Kerensky to Kornilov - it is better able to approach this task directly, to tackle it in earnest. And here it becomes immediately clear that while it is possible to take over the central government in a few days, while it is possible to suppress the military resistance (and sabotage) of the exploiters even in different parts of a great country in a few weeks, the capital solution of the problem of raising the productivity of labour requires, at all events (particularly after a most terrible and devastating war), several years. The protracted nature of the work is certainly dictated by objective circumstances." Lenin went on to discuss the objective circumstances, natural resources, material bases, educational levels, attitudes of workers, and how to adapt the hated Taylor system to Soviet workplaces, etc. While comparing Lenin's actual words to how A.P. quoted him, one could easily wonder whether the words A.P. left out could have been due to 'differences in translations', but greater experience with SLP translations reveals that A.P. systematically deleted any information similar to 'the military resistance (and sabotage) of the exploiters', and 'a most terrible and devastating war' from the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. In a country like the USA, where the SLP leadership ordained a 'peaceful revolution', any notion of fighting, struggle, and the violence of one class against another, even if it was the concrete historical experience of a country far away on another continent, was systematically prevented from educating SLPmembers. Next, attempting to describe the importance of the productivity of labor, A.P. quoted Lenin again (p. 44):5 "In his "The Great Initiative" or "Communist Saturdays" Lenin says: "The productivity of labor is the most important factor in the victory of the new social order."" A.P. quoted fairly accurately in this instance. In "A Great Beginning", aka "Communist Subbotniks", Lenin wrote (LCW 29, p. 427): "In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. Capitalism created a productivity of labour unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can be utterly vanquished, and will be utterly vanquished by socialism creating a new and much higher productivity of labour. This is a very difficult matter and must take a long time; but it has been started, and that is the main thing." Even when A.P. quoted correctly, he used the words to fabricate unrelated stories, as his next sentence demonstrated:6 'We may then logically deduce that where the conditions are the direct opposite of those which confronted Marx in 1871, and Lenin in Russia in 1917, the transition period mentioned by Marx and Engels is not only unnecessary, but it is even impossible, in reason, to conceive of it.' Question: 'Just exactly what was the direct opposite of the conditions that confronted Marx and Lenin?' Was it the advanced economic conditions of the United States? Well, people still have to work in the USA, don't they? The economic systems that both Marx and Lenin confronted were capitalist, weren't they? And the length of the working day here was probably similar to the length of the working day there at the time, so why would anyone want to claim that economic conditions here and there were directly opposite? The conditions that weredirectly opposite, on the other hand, were the political conditions, with democracy here, and monarchy there, one being the negation of the other, according to Marx, which made political conditions as opposite as one could get. With his premises in hand, however, A.P. 'logically deduced' that: 'Since the purpose of the transition period was solely to build up the productive forces that were insufficiently developed in Marx's time and in Lenin's Soviet Union, and because the productive forces in the USA are presently super-developed, then the USA could pass directly to classless, stateless society without a transition.' A major problem with A.P.'s 'logical deduction' was that it directly contradicted Marx's observation that the productive forces were already sufficiently developed to support a world-wide proletarian dictatorship, but not the classless, stateless society that A.P. 'interpreted' as socialism. The 'transition period mentioned by Marx and Engels' was nothing less than theproletarian dictatorship that was to be inaugurated during simultaneous revolutions in technologically developed countries, and this dictatorship was to be a political transition periodfrom capitalism to classless, stateless society, and not exclusively an economic transition period with the sole purpose of further developing productive forces. Not to be ignored are the differences between Lenin's and Marx's transition periods. Lenin's transition-period-to-be began in 1917, and was to run to some date in the future when the rest of the industrial world was supposed to catch up to the Soviet Union politically, have their own proletarian revolutions, and unite into a world-wide proletarian dictatorship. In the Soviet Union, the path to classless, stateless society was to include the following milestones:1) The feudal-monarchist period up to 1861,2) The capitalist-monarchist period up to early 1917,3) The brief bourgeois republic lasting a few months in 1917,4) The Soviet republic beginning late in 1917,5) Marx's projected dictatorship of the proletariat for the whole world,6) And, finally, the projected classless, stateless administration of things for the more distant future. In the passage A.P. quoted, Lenin admitted that the Soviet Union had not yet made it to what he considered to be a true socialist government, or step #5. After considerable experience, Lenin re-assessed the limited achievements of the new Soviet government in his October 14, 1921 article marking the "Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution" (LCW 33, pp. 51-8): "We have consummated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as nobody had done before. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that (in the last analysis) struggle alone will determine how far we shall advance, what part of this immense and lofty task we shall accomplish, and to what extent we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. ... "The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means that the social relations (system, institutions) of the country are purged of medievalism, serfdom, feudalism. "What were the chief manifestations, survivals, remnants of serfdom in Russia up to 1917? The monarchy, the system of social estates, landed proprietorship and land tenure, the status of women, religion, and national oppression. ... "But in order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the peoples of Russia, we were obliged to go farther; and we did go farther. We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a "by-product" of our main and genuinely proletarian-revolutionary, socialist activities. We have always said that reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle. We said - and proved it by deeds - that bourgeois-democratic reforms are a by-product of the proletarian, i.e., of the socialist revolution. ... "Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice. ... "We expected - or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed without having given it adequate consideration - to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary - state capitalism and socialism - in order to prepare - to prepare by many years of effort - for the transition to communism." In the November 1921 "Seventh Moscow Gubernia Conference of the Russian Communist Party", Lenin reported (LCW 33, pp. 96-9): "Now we find ourselves in the position of having to retreat even a little further, not only to state capitalism, but to the state regulation of trade and the money system. Only in this way, a longer way than we expected, can we restore economic life. ... "And what is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is war, much more cruel, much more prolonged and much more stubborn than any other war has ever been. Here danger threatens us at every step. "The position which our New Economic Policy has created - the development of small commercial enterprises, the leasing of state enterprises, etc. - entails the development of capitalist relations; and anybody who fails to see this shows that he has lost his head entirely. It goes without saying that the consolidation of capitalist relations in itself increases the danger. But can you point to a single path in revolution, to any stage and method that would not have its dangers? The disappearance of danger would mean that the war had come to an end, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat had ceased." Lenin admitted here that Soviet policies retreated back to capitalist relations of production in order to get the struggling economy rolling. Some passages indicate that Lenin thought that the wage-slavery of state capitalism could co-exist with the class supremacy of the proletariat during its dictatorship, which is similar to what Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto. But, while Marx and Engels wrote about the relationship between capitalist economics and proletarian dictatorship as a not-so-unusual relationship, Lenin seems to have been remorseful about the retreat into capitalism, as if it might disappoint a lot of people. A.P. certainly must have had an appreciation for the night and day difference between the transition period of a struggling socialist revolution in a single backward country on the one hand, and, on the other, the transition to classless, stateless society after a worldwide socialist revolution in the most developed countries; but A.P. equated the two types of transition periods so that he could quote Lenin out of context to the effect that: 'A country like Russia needs to develop its productive forces, and needs a transition period to ascend to classless stateless society, but, such a transition period is not necessary in technologically advanced countries.' A.P. added (p. 44):7 "Hence, the question of insuring a successful transfer of power from capitalism to Socialism reduces itself, first of all, to one of form." Before our very eyes, the revolution was reduced to 'a question of form', in spite our not having been given any of the rules by which revolution, or any other issue, may be reduced to a question of form, if there are any rules. I suppose that A.P.'s thesis may be plausible enough for some people to accept, but when I remember how difficult it was for me to understand 'conditions' as the reason for the SLP rejecting proletarian dictatorship, then something more substantial just might be required to convince some of us that 'revolution can be reduced to a question of form'. But, if I had been a 'true believer' and had been successfully indoctrinated into the religion of Socialist Industrial Unionism, I suppose that I could also have been led into believing all of the absurdities that support it. Notice also that the revolution was no longer a process of transferring power from one class to another, but rather it became 'a transfer of power from capitalism to Socialism', i.e., from one 'ism to another 'ism, which doesn't sound any more dramatic than peaceful evolution in a democracy. A.P. went on to expand upon the concept of 'form' in greater detail (p. 44):8 'The lower the industrial development, the more that form (in the event of proletarian victory) must partake of the nature of the old society; the higher the industrial development, the more the form must partake of the nature of the new society; in the perfect flowering of capitalist industrial development the form, i.e., the instrument or means of revolution, merges logically into the very governmental structure of the new society itself, or, in other words, the Industrial Union becomes the very framework of the Socialist Industrial Republic of Labor.' A.P.'s language may have been flowery, but industrial unions will not become the form of administration of production in the USA any too soon. In "The State and Revolution", Lenin wrote about the search for forms by anarchists and utopians (LCW 25, pp. 436-7): "The utopians busied themselves with "discovering" political forms under which the socialist transformation of society was to take place. The anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether. The opportunists of present-day Social-Democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as the limit which should not be overstepped; they battered their foreheads praying before this "model", and denounced as anarchism every desire to break these forms." As predicted by Lenin, A.P.'s anarchist statement included nothing about political forms, but I will digress: In the era of emerging capitalism centuries ago, the feudal monarchy was a typical political form. When capitalists organized to overthrow intransigent absolute monarchical rule, the new form of bourgeois rule was the democratic republic, adopted early by Holland, England and the United States, in that order. When the tide of revolutionary fervor reversed direction and went east to France, the proletariat came out more and more in each successive struggle as a class for itself, and, as republicanism swept east to Russia, China, and Vietnam, the ideology broke away from bourgeois content and became increasingly communist. Increasing productivity of labor caused politics to change dramatically. Even more amazing changes are in store relatively soon, including the abolition of politics itself. One description that I would never apply to our present infrastructure is 'the perfect flowering of capitalist industrial development'. In order to survive economically, I've had to be involved with the nuts and bolts of this alleged 'perfect flowering' far too closely for comfort, and have rarely felt happy to be involved with it. I think that A.P.'s description of the state of American technical prowess would appeal more to those who make lots of money off of other people's labor, or to anyone other than those who actually make the machinery work. A.P's 'perfect flowering' talk is also part of the portrayal of American economic conditions as 'diametrically opposed' to those of 1871 or 1917, in order to try to show that 'the transition period is necessary only to develop the productive forces', and that 'the transition period is not necessary in the USA, hence no need here for a proletarian dictatorship.' But, this 'perfect flowering' will not bloom for me until I have been replaced with a robot, and I never again have to do anything disgusting. A.P. concluded this section with (p. 44):9 "And to have worked out this revolutionary theory, in strictest conformity with the basic principles of Marxism, constitutes the great De Leon's vital contribution to Marxian science." If we have De Leon to thank for all of the above 'revolutionary theory', then De Leon is in just as much trouble with me as Arnold Petersen. 'De Leon worked out his revolutionary theory in strictest conformity with the basic principles of Bakuninism' would have been more accurate, though 'Bakuninist principles' may just be another oxymoron, if the Party's attempts to put them together coherently is any example. In his next chapter, A.P. tackled the important theoretical question of proletarian democracy ("PD vs. D+D", pp. 44-46):p. 44:"Proletarian Democracy. "That the so-called "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is essentially a question of form is made clear by Lenin on numerous occasions. Thus in his exposure of Kautsky he says: ""Proletarian Democracy, of which the Soviet regime constitutes one of the forms, has given to the world a hitherto unknown expansion and development of democracy for the gigantic majority of the population, for the exploited and laboring masses." ("The Proletarian Revolution.") {1} "Note that "Proletarian Democracy" is used here as a synonym for "Proletarian Dictatorship" as constituted in Russia. The form of "Proletarian Democracy" in this country is the Industrial Union in control of social production. {2} In the same pamphlet Lenin carefully and distinctly says: "The Soviets are the Russian form of proletarian democracy." It is the "Russian form," mark that - not the British, the United States, or any other form, but the Russian. And he adds that any one who desired to study the subject of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would first give a general definition of dictatorship, "and then examine its peculiar national form, the Soviets, and give a criticism of them as one of the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat." ("The Proletarian Revolution.") {3} Here he speaks so plainly that it would seem impossible even for an Anarcho-Communist to misunderstand him. {4}In this country the "peculiar form" of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (using the term here, not in its strict dictionary sense, but in the sense of working class supremacy) is the Industrial Union which, coupled with the fact of super-developed capitalist production, renders meaningless all talk of a transition period." In this chapter, A.P. used a quote from Lenin to try to prove that 'proletarian democracy is a question of form'. Did A.P. succeed? Let's see what Lenin really had to say in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (LCW 28, p. 246): "Proletarian democracy, of which Soviet government is one of the forms, has brought a development and expansion of democracy unprecedented in the world, for the vast majority of the population, for the exploited and working people." First, considering the quality of 'translations', notice the differences between: A.P.'s: Lenin's: "Soviet regime""Soviet government""hitherto unknown" "unprecedented""gigantic majority""vast majority""laboring masses""working people" In A.P.'s 'translation', readers could easily be left with an impression that Lenin and/or Soviet people were intellectually backward and/or a bit brutal. A historical note: It appears that many of the works of Lenin were re-translated into English after the revolution stabilized. In the production of this book, I did not have access to the 'translations' that A.P. might have used, but it is doubtful that the differences could have been as enormous as what appear between some of A.P.'s quotes and the modern Progress Publishers editions. I doubt if there was any good excuse for A.P.'s choice of words, even considering the fact that Lenin wanted to get his refutation of Kautsky's pamphlet "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" published as soon as possible. Though translations into English, French, and German were available as early as 1919, it is conceivable that the first ones may not have been of the highest quality. I might yield to the documentation of other researchers on this point, if anyone wants to tackle it. Back to the main subject: Note that Lenin made a simple claim that 'the Soviet government was one of the forms of proletarian democracy'. There's a difference between being a form andbeing a question of form. The former suggests that if Lenin claims that 'the Soviets are a form of proletarian democracy', then the Soviet form could be compared to other recognized forms of proletarian democracy, such as the Commune; whereas, if A.P. suggests that 'proletarian dictatorship is a question of form', then he is suggesting that its form alone can determine whether or not it is a proletarian dictatorship. One can easily determine, even from A.P.'s version, that Lenin by no means intended the proletarian dictatorship to be considered 'a question of form'. There never really should have been any argument as to the form of proletarian dictatorship, for its form was defined by Engels as a democratic republic in his "Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891" (MESW III, p. 435): "If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown." Well, imagine that. The democratic republic being theoretically just as good for proletarian dictatorship (or democracy) as it is for bourgeois democracy. Now, why didn't A.P. have something to say something about that? Maybe A.P. thought that, along with so many other thorny issues, "Speech is silver, silence is gold." Though A.P. might have conceded that 'The soviets were an appropriate form of proletarian democracy for the Soviet Union', under no circumstances would A.P. validate the soviet democratic republican form as appropriate for the USA, though he probably would have been more than happy if Lenin, or anyone else in the world, had bought his SIU form. After quoting Lenin, A.P. wrote (p. 45):2 'Note that "Proletarian Democracy" is used here as a synonym for "Proletarian Dictatorship" as constituted in Russia. The form of "Proletarian Democracy" in this country is the Industrial Union in control of social production. In the same pamphlet Lenin carefully and distinctly says: "The Soviets are the Russian form of proletarian democracy." It is the "Russianform," mark that - not the British, the United States, or any other form, but the Russian.' Actually, on page 257 of Volume 28 of LCW, in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (reproduced below), "Lenin carefully and distinctly" wrote that "The Soviets are the Russian form of the proletarian dictatorship", rather than A.P.'s 'proletarian democracy'. More translation problems? A.P. repeated his assertion that the SIU was to be the form of proletarian 'dictatorship' in the USA, as though it had been carved in stone somewhere, and as though A.P. had received his inspiration in the same way Moses received the Ten Commandments (in the Charleton Heston version of that movie).3 "And he adds that any one who desired to study the subject of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would first give a general definition of dictatorship, "and then examine its peculiar national form, the Soviets, and give a criticism of them as one of the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat." ("The Proletarian Revolution.")" So, why couldn't A.P. have taken up the challenge and given his own definition of dictatorship? The late Marxist scholar Hal Draper noted that, in the 19th century, as Marx used the term, dictatorship implied a temporary reign of extraordinary rule. The dictatorship of the proletariat for Marx implied a temporary, or transitory, regime that was to last only as long as society was still divided into classes, and an upper class still had to be kept in subjection. In our age, however, dictatorship seems to have lost the 'temporary' connotation, and popularly connotes permanence as much as harsh rule. And what did Lenin really say? We find ourselves once again obliged to make up for A.P.'s tendency to quote mere snippets (LCW 28, p. 257):"THE SOVIETS DARE NOT BECOME STATE ORGANISATIONS "The Soviets are the Russian form of the proletarian dictatorship. If a Marxist theoretician, writing a work on the dictatorship of the proletariat, had really studied the subject (and not merely repeated the petty-bourgeois lamentations against dictatorship, as Kautsky did, singing to Menshevik tunes), he would first have given a general definition of dictatorship, and would then have examined its peculiar, national, form, the Soviets; he would have given his critique of them as one of the forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat." It's not too hard to figure out why A.P. might not have wanted to quote Lenin more thoroughly in this case, what with his warning of petty-bourgeois lamentations against political dictatorship. In that same work, Lenin gave his own definition of dictatorship (Ibid., p. 236): "Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. "The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws." Lenin's definition embraced elements of force, violence, unrestricted rule, etc., against the bourgeoisie - everything that was abhorrent to the civilized liar A.P. If lies had been as abhorrent to A.P. as violence, we would have been spared our present labors. A.P. concluded his chapter on proletarian democracy with (p. 45):4 "Here he speaks so plainly that it would seem impossible even for an Anarcho-Communist to misunderstand him. In this country the "peculiar form" of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (using the term here, not in its strict dictionary sense, but in the sense of working class supremacy) is the Industrial Union which, coupled with the fact of super-developed capitalist production, renders meaningless all talk of a transition period." In his conclusion, a lesson A.P. hoped for us to have gotten out of his excerpt from Lenin was that 'the question of revolution in any country is mostly a question of form', and that 'the soviets are a non-American form of proletarian democracy, not to be mistakenly adopted by Americans.' Even if A.P. could not have quoted Lenin as having written anything even remotely resembling such, he probably hoped that it would be what the already converted would want to see in print, and, if they can peacefully co-exist with the 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry' scam, then they can also probably accept the 'proletarian democracy is a question of form' scam. A.P. really couldn't take his 'question of form' scam very far, and it couldn't invalidate the soviets. He certainly didn't prove that 'the SIU is the form of 'proletarian dictatorship' in the USA.' And what were those forms of proletarian dictatorship with the funny-sounding foreign name? Interestingly enough, soviets were nothing more exotic than elected councils, such as what anyone could find in any democratic country. In spite of all of the quotes to the effect that 'soviets are the Russian form of proletarian democracy or dictatorship', and probably much to the disappointment of A.P., I have never seen a quote from Lenin to the effect that 'the soviet form would only work in Russia.' A.P.'s mention of the strict dictionary sense of the dictatorship of the proletariat piqued my curiosity, so I turned to my Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, 1968. Here's what it said on page 627: "dictatorship of the proletariat: the assumption of political power by the proletariat with concomitant repression of previously controlling or governing classes that in Marxist philosophy is considered an essential preliminary to establishment of the classless state" Even considering its 'classless state' oxymoron, this definition is a lot closer to Marx's definition than A.P.'s 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry and middle classes', or A.P's 'economic transition period'. What does it say about the ability of the SLP to "educate, agitate, and organize", when a common dictionary has a much more accurate definition of thedictatorship of the proletariat than a so-called party of socialism? In "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government", a pamphlet that A.P. had already quoted from, Lenin gave a more thorough definition of the dictatorship of the proletariat (LCW 27, pp. 264-5): "On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that during every transition from capitalism to socialism, dictatorship is necessary for two main reasons, or along two main channels. Firstly, capitalism cannot be defeated and eradicated without the ruthless suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot at once be deprived of their wealth, of their advantages of organisation and knowledge, and consequently for a fairly long period will inevitably try to overthrow the hated rule of the poor; secondly, every great revolution, and a socialist revolution in particular, even if there is no external war, is inconceivable without internal war, i.e., civil war, which is even more devastating than external war, and involves thousands and millions of cases of wavering and desertion from one side to another, implies a state of extreme indefiniteness, lack of equilibrium and chaos. And of course, all the elements of disintegration of the old society, which are inevitably very numerous and connected mainly with the petty bourgeoisie (because it is the petty bourgeoisie that every war and every crisis ruins and destroys first), are bound to "reveal themselves" during such a profound revolution. And these elements of disintegration cannot "reveal themselves" otherwise than in an increase of crime, hooliganism, corruption, profiteering and outrages of every kind. To put these down requires time and requires an iron hand. "There has not been a single great revolution in history in which the people did not instinctively realise this and did not show salutary firmness by shooting thieves on the spot. The misfortune of previous revolutions was that the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people, which sustained them in their state of tension and gave them the strength to suppress ruthlessly the elements of disintegration, did not last long. The social, i.e., the class, reason for this instability of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people was the weakness of the proletariat, which alone is able (if it is sufficiently numerous, class-conscious and disciplined) to win over to its side the majority of the working and exploited people (the majority of the poor, to speak more simply and popularly) and retain power sufficiently long to suppress completely all the exploiters as well as all the elements of disintegration. "It was this historical experience of all revolutions, it was this world-historic - economic and political - lesson that Marx summed up when he gave his short, sharp, concise and expressive formula: dictatorship of the proletariat."Two Types of Transition In "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", Lenin wrote about the transition to communism (LCW 28, p. 254): "The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns intoattempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters - who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it - throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the "paradise", of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the "common herd" is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to "common" labor...). In the train of the capitalist exploiters follow the wide sections of the petty bourgeoisie, with regard to whom decades of historical experience of all countries testify that they vacillate and hesitate, one day marching behind the proletariat and the next day taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution; that they become panic-stricken at the first defeat or semi-defeat of the workers, grow nervous, run about aimlessly, snivel, and rush from one camp into the other - just like our Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. "In these circumstances, in an epoch of desperately acute war, when history presents the question of whether age-old and thousand-year-old privileges are to be or not to be - at such a time to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about dictatorship being unnecessary and about equality between the exploiter and the exploited! What infinite stupidity and abysmal philistinism are needed for this! "However, during the decades of comparatively "peaceful" capitalism between 1871 and 1914, the Augean stables of philistinism, imbecility, and apostasy accumulated in the socialist parties which were adapting themselves to opportunism" ... Maybe someday we will see if a party that unswervingly represents the interest of 'complete lower class participation in the economy' can avoid the pitfalls that befell previous parties. In modern democracies, planks as divisive as 'redistributing wealth and property' will be overlooked as workers struggle to find new ways to share the vanishing work, and adopt various measures to redistribute the remaining work. In his next two chapters, A.P. tackled the theory of transition to classless and stateless communism (pp. 45-7): "As to transition period: Here again the clear-cut statements of Lenin bear out the contention of De Leon that in this country we can pass from capitalism to Socialism without an intermediary stage, and that it would be an act of usurpation to continue the purely political control for one moment beyond working class seizure and control of industry:p. 46:""Transition Period." ""There is no doubt [said Lenin] that the Socialist revolution in a country where the immense majority of the population belongs to the petty land-holder producers, is possible only by reason of a number of special transition measures, {1} which would be entirely unnecessary in countries having a developed capitalism, where the wage-earners in industry and agriculture constitute an immense majority. {2} In countries with a highly developed capitalism, there has been for decades a developed class of wage workers engaged in agriculture. Only such a class can serve as a support to an immediate transition to Socialism, socially, economically, and politically. Only in countries in which this class is sufficiently developed will the transition from capitalism to Socialism be possible. {3} [Emphases in the foregoing mine. - A.P.] In a great number of utterances, in all our addresses, in the entire press, we have pointed out that the condition in Russia is different, that in Russia we have a minority of industrial workers, an immense majority of petty land-holders. The social revolution in such a country may meet with ultimate success only under two conditions; in the first place, under the condition that a simultaneous social revolution in one of the several advanced countries will come to its support." (Speech on "Our relation to the Peasants," delivered at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 15, 1921.)p. 47:"Lenin's Clear Vision. "Lenin here virtually draws a picture of capitalism in the United States and he says, in effect, that all the transition measures which make the "Proletarian Dictatorship" necessary in Russia are unnecessary here, and that an immediate transition to Socialism is possible for the workers here - provided, of course, the workers here organize their "peculiar" form of power, the Industrial Union. I ask: Will the lunatics who are shouting for "Soviets" and "Proletarian Dictatorship" in this country heed the "master's voice"? Echo answers: They won't heed the "master's voice." No, they won't, because that would rob them of even the semblance of an excuse for existence, and after all, you know, business is business, even when it isn't as flourishing as it was!" A.P. leaned heavily upon Lenin's writings to help persuade his readers that 'a transition period of proletarian dictatorship would not be necessary in the USA'. Let us examine how A.P. used the quote, in which Lenin was interpreted as having made the following points:1 'In a country in which petty land-holder agriculture predominates, the socialist revolution is possible only by reason of special transition measures.'2 'In a country in which agricultural wage-labor predominates, the socialist revolution does not require special transition measures.'3 'Only in countries in which the class of agricultural wage-labor is sufficiently developed will the transition from capitalism to Socialism be possible.' There seems to be a contradiction between statement 3 and the first two. Double-negating statement 3 yields (3xx):3xx 'The transition from capitalism to socialism is not possible in a country in which small-holding peasant agriculture predominates.' Statements 3 and 3xx contradict statement 1, for 3 and 3xx discount the possibility of a transition to socialism under any condition, while statement 1 allows for socialist revolution if special transition measures are applied. To determine the source of the contradiction, let us go to the original in Lenin's Collected Works, and see what the "Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)" really contained (LCW 32, pp. 214-5):"REPORT ON THE SUBSTITUTION OF A TAX IN KIND FOR THE SURPLUS-GRAIN APPROPRIATION SYSTEM MARCH 15 {1921} {Excerpt} "A word or two on the theoretical significance of, or the theoretical approach to, this issue. There is no doubt that in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population consists of small agricultural producers, a socialist revolution can be carried out only through the implementation of a whole series of special transitional measures {4} which would be superfluous in highly developed capitalist countries where wage-workers in industry and agriculture make up the vast majority. {5} Highly developed capitalist countries have a class of agricultural wage-workers that has taken shape over many decades. Only such a class can socially, economically, and politically support a direct transition to socialism. Only in countries where this class is sufficiently developed is it possible to pass directly from capitalism to socialism, without any special country-wide transitional measures. {6} We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and all our statements in the press, that this is not the case in Russia, for here industrial workers are a minority and petty farmers are the vast majority. In such a country, the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. As you know, we have done very much indeed in comparison with the past to bring about this condition, but far from enough to make it a reality. "The second condition is agreement between the proletariat, which is exercising its dictatorship, that is, holds state power, and the majority of the peasant population. Agreement is a very broad concept which includes a whole series of measures and transitions. I must say at this point that our propaganda must be open and above-board. We must condemn most resolutely those who regard politics as a series of cheap little tricks, frequently bordering on deception. Their mistakes have to be corrected. You can't fool a class." From this quote, we can distill the following points:4 'The socialist revolution requires special transition measures in countries in which small peasant agriculture predominates.' (This sufficiently approximates A.P.'s interpretation in point 1)5 'The socialist revolution does not require special transition measures in countries in which agricultural wage-labor predominates.' (This sufficiently approximates A.P.'s interpretation in point 2)6 'Only in a country in which agricultural wage-labor predominates is the transition from capitalism to socialism possible without special country-wide transitional measures.' Double-negating point 6, we get:6xx 'The transition from capitalism to socialism is possible in countries in which peasant agriculture predominates, but requires special country-wide transitional measures.' In Lenin's text, there was no contradiction between points 4, 5, and 6, but the difference between Lenin's point 6 and A.P.'s point 3 is considerable, for Lenin's version at least allows for atransition to socialism in a country in which small peasant agriculture predominates, whereas A.P. didn't allow for a transition to socialism in such a country under any circumstances. More 'differences in translations'? In his text, Lenin also spelled out two conditions under which the socialist revolution could triumph in a country in which peasant agricultural labor predominates. The first condition, which A.P. only somewhat correctly quoted, was 'if the revolution was given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries.' A.P. felt free to include thatfirst condition (under which the Soviet revolution would succeed) because it also supported his twisted perspective: 'Since no other country had a socialist revolution at the same time as the Soviets, then the absence of supportive revolutions could only mean that socialism in Russia could not possibly triumph, so whatever materialized there was not worth supporting.' Since A.P.'s translation was incorrect, or else Lenin was willfully misinterpreted in order to propagate an anarchist perspective, A.P.'s conclusion in #3 was null and void. The second condition, quoted above, but which A.P. could not possibly have included in his pamphlet without contradicting his 'dictatorship of the proletariat over the peasantry', contained the ideas of 1) the worker-peasant alliance, and 2) working class state power. Those very ideas were right there, ready to correct A.P., had he been honest enough to accept a little guidance onto the right track. Since A.P. didn't take the cue, he certainly also deserved Lenin's criticism directed against 'those who regard politics as a series of cheap little tricks, frequently bordering on deception.' In his text, Lenin went on to enumerate some of the problems with the worker-peasant alliance; namely, the agreement between workers and peasants was not very satisfactory to some peasants, farm production lagged due to a lack of means of exchange, collective farms were being mismanaged, there was a major crop failure, etc. Lenin's overview was that the Bolsheviks were finding the building of socialism to be a very difficult task. The main obstacles included the relative small size of the industrial proletariat, the economic devastation left over from World War One, the ongoing civil war against the old feudal and capitalist ruling class elements, the support of those elements by the Europeans and Americans, and the failure of the technologically advanced countries to have their own proletarian revolutions in sympathy with the new Soviet Union. These factors and more were making it difficult to get socialism off the ground, and Lenin was discussing 'special transition measures', such as state capitalism, to try to advance the social revolution. If anything was certain during those trying times, it was that classless and stateless society - or A.P.'s version of 'socialism' - was completely out of sight, and out of most people's minds. In what other contexts did Lenin discuss the transition period? In "The State and Revolution", a pamphlet that A.P. had to have read in its entirety, Lenin wrote (LCW 25, p. 468): "In other words, under capitalism we have the state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another, and, what is more, of the majority by the minority. Naturally, to be successful, such an undertaking as the systematic suppression of the exploited majority by the exploiting minority calls for the utmost ferocity and savagery in the matter of suppressing, it calls for seas of blood, through which mankind is actually wading its way in slavery, serfdom and wage-labour. "Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to communism suppression is still necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the "state", is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. It is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word; for the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed than the suppression of the risings of slaves, serfs or wage-labourers, and it will cost mankind far less. And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear." That second paragraph was all very fine in theory, but certainly didn't describe the state machine that evolved in the old Soviet Union. But, for an alleged socialist like A.P. to twist Lenin's words around to make the Bolshevik revolution appear to be impossible, meant that he had to have abandoned the principle of international solidarity between socialist parties, which, along with his lies, again raises the question of 'for whom A.P. might really have been working'.Union and Party Relations A.P. continued with a treatise on the role of trade unions (pp. 47-8):p. 47:"Marx on the Importance of Economic Organization. "The question may be asked: Did Marx attach any importance to the economic organization in the accomplishment of the proletarian revolution? The answer is emphatically in the affirmative. De Leon, in passing, observes "that here in America the union, the economic organization of labor, leaps to the transcendent importance that Marx's genius dimly descried in the distance ....." We have then, first, Marx's statement in "Value, Price and Profit," reading: ""[The unions] fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system."*" ___________ "* "By consciously opposing the incessant encroachments of capitalism the economic organization becomes, quite unconsciously, the center of gravity [Schwerpunkt] for organizing the working class, even as the medieval communes served as centers of gravity for the rising bourgeoisie. Through the daily guerrilla fights between labor and capital the economic organizations of labor become still more important as levers for the abolition of the wages system." Quoted by Franz Mehring, in his work "Karl Marx," from resolution drafted by Marx for the Geneva Conference of the International Workingmen's Association, September 1866." This quote from the SLP pamphlet "Value, Price and Profit" is exactly true to the Progress Publishers edition of "Wages, Price and Profit", but A.P.'s excerpt left out ideas from the first two sentences of the original that would have provided a more balanced view of the trades unions question. Here they are (MESW II, pp. 75-6): "Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects ... {etc., exactly as A.P. quoted just above}" Marx knew quite a bit about trade unions, good and bad. If he had thought that socialist society could have been organized solely around unions, he probably would have said so somewhere. Marx's June 1865 "Notes for the Report on Wages, Price and Profit" to the First International included a few more ideas on how trade unions work well (DFI 1, p. 272): "3) Trades' Unions work well as far as they counteract, if even temporarily, the tendency to a fall in the general rate of wages, and as far as they tend to shorten and regulate the time of labour, in other words, the extent of the working day. They work well as far as they are a means of organising the working class as a class. They fail accidentally, by an injudicious use of their power, and they fail generally by accepting the present relations of capital and labour as permanent instead of working for their abolition." With regard to A.P.'s use of the footnote, the text of the 1951 Allen and Unwin edition of Mehring's "Karl Marx" is similar enough to A.P.'s version to allow it to pass without comment. However, the very next sentence of the text reads (p. 355): "In the past the trade unions had concentrated their activities too exclusively on the immediate struggle against capital, but in the future they ought not to hold themselves aloof from the general political and social movement of their class." Could A.P. have missed this reference to political action on the part of the trade unions? Not too easily, unless he had his blinders on. The footnote also seems to be similar in substance to a passage in an official version of "The Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council" written by Marx at the end of August, 1866 (DFI 1, pp. 347-8):"6. TRADES' UNIONS. THEIR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE "(a) Their past. "Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however, is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition amongst themselves. "Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediencies for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerrilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule. "(b) Their present. "Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield: ""That this conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that body, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community." "(c) Their future. "Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large that their efforts, far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions." Marx's recommendations regarding the attitude of trade unions to politics were found in parts (b) and (c). From the context of those excerpts, 'trade unions should be politically minded and not just concentrate on wages and other economic issues.' In an even more militant passage, Marx wrote (Ibid., p. 346):"5. COOPERATIVE LABOUR{excerpt} "(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wage slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalistic society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves." In this section, Marx was more explicit about political action and expressed the possibility that the producing classes would forever remain enslaved to the upper classes if they didn't take state power. What Engels saw as a big problem for the working class in general, but which the trade unions were helping to alleviate, was described in "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 255): "The active resistance of the English working-men has its effect in holding the money-greed of the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping alive the opposition of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of the bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is needed than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class. But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the workers among themselves; i.e., upon their want of cohesion." Anyone who has wage-slaved with others is probably conscious of this 'competition of the workers among themselves'. Engels' observation is as valid today as when it was written. In his "Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International", Lenin revealed the monetary interests of the labor aristocracy that also helps keep the working class divided. (LCW 31, pp. 193-4): "11. One of the chief causes hampering the revolutionary working-class movement in the developed capitalist countries is the fact that because of their colonial possessions and the super-profits gained by finance capital, etc., the capitalists of these countries have been able to create a relatively larger and more stable labour aristocracy, a section which comprises a small minority of the working class. This minority enjoys better terms of employment and is most imbued with a narrow-minded craft spirit and with petty-bourgeois and imperialist prejudices. It forms the real social pillar of the Second International, of the reformists and the "Centrists"; at present it might even be called the social mainstay of the bourgeoisie. No preparation of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is possible, even in the preliminary sense, unless an immediate, systematic, extensive and open struggle is waged against this stratum, which, as experience has already fully shown, will no doubt provide the bourgeois White guards with many a recruit after the victory of the proletariat." Lenin maintained a certain amount of optimism that workers could do something about capitalism in the more advanced countries of the Western hemisphere. But Engels knew thatworkers in England were far, far away from being revolutionary, as he explained in a June 1879 letter to Bernstein (MESC, pp. 300-1): "For a number of years past the English working-class movement has been hopelessly describing a narrow circle of strikes for higher wage and shorter hours, not, however, as an expedient or means of propaganda and organisation but as the ultimate goal. The Trades Unions even bar all political action on principle and in their charters, thus excluding all participation in any general activity of the working class as a class. The workers are divided politically into Conservatives and Liberal Radicals, into supporters of the Disraeli (Beaconsfield) Cabinet and supporters of the Gladstone Cabinet. One can therefore speak of a labour movement only in so far as strikes take place here, which, whether they are won or not, do not get the movement one step further. To inflate such strikes - which moreover have often enough been brought about intentionally by the capitalists during the last few years of bad business to have a pretext for closing down their factories and mills, strikes in which the working-class movement does not make the slightest headway - into struggles of world importance, as is done, for instance, in the Freiheit published here, can, in my opinion, only do harm. No attempt should be made to conceal the fact that at present no real labour movement in the Continental sense exists here, and I therefore believe you will not lose much if for the time being you do not receive any reports on the doings of the Trades Unions here." Notice how contemptuous Engels seemed to be of 'higher wages and shorter hours'. To Marx Engels, and Lenin, capturing political and state power in order to expropriate the rich was seen as the only way to the new society. Back in my Leninist days, I imagined a scenario in which the revolution in the USA would not take place until all of the colonies had won their independence, a scenario that supposedly would eliminate the source of money for our domestic labor aristocracy. Later on I wondered if, as many more people are put out of work by technology, and the working poor of all countries (including those of the first world) are all ground down to one common level of misery, that Marx's world-wide revolution would be inevitable. Now I know that, instead of aviolent solution, workers will instead figure out ways to peacefully share what little work that has yet to be taken over by machines, if an ecological disaster doesn't first occur while consuming resources at unnecessarily high rates because of our unnecessarily long hours. In "Marx and the Trade Unions", Lozovsky explained how the alleged opportunists distorted Marxism around the turn of the century (M+TU, pp. 141-2): "What went on in the heads of many trade unionists was formulated by Eduard Bernstein, the real spiritual father of social-fascism. Bernstein, as early as 1899, came out with hisPrerequisites of Socialism, which should be duly dubbed the holy book of modern Social-Democracy. In this book of Bernstein's we find both industrial democracy, the growing into socialism by means of social reforms, and the democratisation of industry through the medium of the trade unions, etc. Bernstein, in writing his book, leaned for support on the trade unions, while the trade unionists, turning more and more away from Marx, became encouraged and openly recognised Bernstein as their theoretician and leader. "Before Bernstein published his book the trade union pseudo-Marxists concealed their disagreement with Marx; but after the publication of the book, it became the fashion among the leaders of the German trade unions to "criticise" Marx. The trade unions in most cases did not theorise: they simply revised Marx in their day-to-day work, they distorted his teachings in practice and turned the elementals of Marxism on the role of the trade unions under the capitalist State upside down. If we examine historically the development of the anti-Marxian views of the trade unionists, we see that on the following questions they pursued the following lines: "(1) The theory of the class struggle "is, itself," correct; however, it loses its significance with the development of the trade unions and the establishment of democracy; (2) Revolution is an obsolete conception, it corresponds to a lower level of social development; the democratic State precludes revolutions and the revolutionary struggle; (3) Democracy assures the working class the peaceful passing over from capitalism to socialism, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat is not and cannot be on the order of the day; (4) The theory of impoverishment held good at one time, but now it has become obsolete; (5) During the epoch of Marx it was perhaps true that the leading role in the trade unions belonged to the party. But to-day, only party-political neutrality can ensure the effective development of the trade union movement; (6) During the epoch of Marx strikes had to be considered perhaps as one of the most important weapons of struggle, but now the trade unions have outgrown this, etc. "Thus, everything led to the point that Marxism had become out of date, that it must be re-examined, corrected and supplemented. The work of "correcting" Marxism was divided between the Social-Democrats and the trade unions. Before the war this was done under the slogan of the necessity of "enriching and developing Marxism on the basis of the theories of Marx."" It's amazing how, when the masses lead the way, they are often so much more correct than communist party ideologues. Next, A.P. quoted from the infamous Hamann article, which many researchers believe is a distortion of Marx's viewpoints (p. 48): "We also have Marx's statement to J. Hamann, general treasurer of the German metallurgical workers. It was made on the occasion of Marx's visit to his friend, Dr. Kugelman (sic), in Hanover, Germany, on September 30, 1869. It was reported by Hamann in The Volksstaat of November 17, the same year, as follows: ""The trades union should never be connected with, nor made dependent upon a political party, if the former is to fulfill its task. The moment that is done, the death-blow is dealt to it. The trades union is the school for Socialism. In the trades union the workingmen are trained into Socialists, because there the struggle with capital is daily carried on under their very eyes. All political parties, whatever their complexion may be, and without exception, warm up the working class only for a season, transitorily. The trades union [i.e., the economic organization], on the contrary, captures the mass of the workingmen permanently. ONLY THE TRADES UNION [i.e., the economic organization] IS CAPABLE OF SETTING ON FOOT A TRUE POLITICAL PARTY OF LABOR, AND THUS RAISE A BULWARK AGAINST THE POWER OF CAPITAL." "Commenting on this statement De Leon said, in part: ""The formation of the Socialist party gave impetus to the development of the Socialist Labor Party principle. SLP principle soon took shape in the principle that the union was an essential factor in the emancipation of the working class. The Marxian motto, 'only the union can give birth to the true party of labor' became the guiding light of the SLP. The Party lay main stress upon the organization of the working class into revolutionary unions, and considered the ballot, however important, useful and necessary, a secondary consideration."" Some scholars claim that the Hamann article attributed statements of theory to Marx that he had never made before, and that it also contradicted statements Marx had made elsewhere.A.P. considered one of its sentences important enough to capitalize: "ONLY THE TRADES UNION [i.e., the economic organization] IS CAPABLE OF SETTING ON FOOT A TRUE POLITICAL PARTY OF LABOR, AND THUS RAISE A BULWARK AGAINST THE POWER OF CAPITAL." Does that look like a statement Marx would have made? In a November, 1871, letter to F. Bolte, Marx wrote in essence that 'working class political movements are spawned by separate economic (union) movements, and political movements can further develop unions', as in a mutual relationship. That is a long way from 'only the trades union can set on foot a true political party of labor.' Let us take a look at the ramifications of that SLP 'principle', and try to reconcile it with Marx's 1872 Speech at the Hague Congress (MESW II, p. 292): "The worker will some day have to win political supremacy in order to organize labour along new lines;" ... The SLP statement of principle that 'Only the trade union is capable of setting on foot a true political party of labor' would quite effectively preclude people of intellectual and/or bourgeois backgrounds, like Marx and Engels, from initiating or participating in a true political party of labor. Engels' letter to Bebel of March, 1875, critiqued the position (or lack thereof) of the United Social-Democratic Workers' Party of Germany on relations with unions (MESW III, p. 34): "Fifthly, there is not a word about the organisation of the working class as a class by means of the trade unions. And that is a very essential point, in which it carries on its daily struggles with capital, in which it trains itself, and which nowadays even amid the worst reaction (as in Paris at present) can simply no longer be smashed. Considering the importance which this organisation has attained also in Germany, it would be absolutely necessary in our opinion to mention it in the programme and if possible to leave open a place for it in the Party organisation." If 'Only the trade union is capable of setting on foot a true political party of labor' was such a strong SLP principle, why would the Party have poured so much nourishment into itsSocialist Trade and Labor Alliance (1895-1905)? That whole episode was more akin to 'the Party trying to set on foot a true union of labor', as were Party efforts later on to get the working class to organize into Socialist Industrial Unions. Even if the SIU represents Marx's reorganization of labor along new lines, then, according to Marx's Speech at the Hague Congress: suchreorganization could not occur without the working class having first won political power. The corresponding political victory in SLP ideology is 'the abolition of the state at the ballot box', but 'that victory would be empty if the workers had not already organized themselves into Industrial Unions ready to assume control over industries at the moment of political victory.' According to Marx, capturing political power comes before reorganizing labor, while the SLP would reorganize labor along new lines before taking political power (away from the rich). That's one more way in which the allegedly Marxist SLP contradicts Marx. Let us compare some of the elements of the Hamann article with more official works of Marx. The article's first two sentences read (p. 48): ""The trades union should never be connected with, nor made dependent upon a political party, if the former is to fulfill its task. The moment that is done, the death-blow is dealt to it."" That imputed lack of connection between the two aspects of the workers' movement could be contrasted to a Resolution adopted at the 1871 London Conference of the First International on the subject of political action (DFI 4, pp. 444-5):"RESOLUTIONS OF THE LONDON CONFERENCE"IX"POLITICAL ACTION OF THE WORKING CLASS{Extract} "In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination of the propertied classes resulting from it; "Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes; "That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and its ultimate end - the abolition of classes; "That the combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists - "The Conference recalls to the members of the International: "That in the militant state of the working class, its economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united." This 1871 Resolution on political action, showing the indissoluble unity between economic and political action, was written to counter the influence of Bakunin, who was preachingabstention from politics for the working class. Why, according to Hamann, 'workers cannot be members of both working class parties and unions at the very same time', is beyond Marxistimagination, and appears to be an anarchist rule. If the Hamann statement had warned workers against being connected with bourgeois political parties, that would have been a more plausible statement for Marx to have made, and indeed he did, in the part about the working class (MESW II, p. 291) 'constituting itself a distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the possessing classes'. In many of their writings, Marx and Engels stated that the workers' party could ally itself with movements that expressed interests parallel to their own, and oppose parties or movements with opposite or hostile interests. In his 1902 work "What is to be Done", Lenin showed that, in the Russian monarchy of the time, in which both the economic and political movements of the working classes were illegal,it was possible for both aspects of the workers' movements to practically coincide. But, in the freer European democracies, where both parties and unions had won varying degrees of legality, they could operate more independently. Legal or illegal, Lenin thought it desirable for them to work together as closely as possible (LCW 5, p. 453). In "'Left-Wing' Communism - an Infantile Disorder", written two and a half years after the Bolshevik conquest of power, Lenin wrote that preaching "independence" of trade unions was counter-revolutionary, with the intent of rendering the proletariat "independent" of proletarian state power (see LCW 31, p. 48). The next part of the Hamann article that sounds unlikely for Marx to have stated was (p. 48): "All political parties, whatever their complexion may be, and without exception, warm up the working class only for a season, transitorily." If the Hamann article were to have stated: 'All bourgeois political parties ... warm up the working class only for a season', that would have been closer to what Marx and Engels intended. In the next chapter of "PD vs. D+D", A.P. quoted Lenin again, and continued to theorize about unions (pp. 49-50):p. 49:"Organizing the Workers Industrially. "Turning to Lenin we find this pregnant observation: ""Without the closest connection with the trade unions, without their hearty support and self-sacrificing work . . . . it would have been, of course, impossible to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half years, or even for two and a half months." ("'Left Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder.") {1} "If this were true in Russia, if in such a low economic organism the union played so important a role, {2} how much more essential would it not be in an economic organism of such high order as the United States where the very conditions cry out for revolutionary economic organizations? "To De Leon there never was any question as to the possibility of organizing the workers industrially. {3} To question that was to question the possibility of accomplishing the social revolution. He said: ""The social revolution is not accomplishable unless the proletariat becomes conscious of its class interests, conscious of its historic mission, and is organized accordingly. To deny the fact, and yet expect Socialism, is vain Utopia, in conflict, moreover, with historic evolution. To ignore the fact, and yet practise political Socialism, is a dastardly deception practised upon the proletariat {4} .... efforts will be vain .... unless the proletariat is organized economically in the battalions that will enable it to assume the reins of industrial government on the day of its political victory."" De Leon's statements certainly reflected the age-old battle between anarchists and state socialists. Now we shall see what A.P. - De Leon's intellectual successor - did with the topic of organizing unions. A.P. started off with a quote from Lenin:1 ""Without the closest connection with the trade unions, without their hearty support and self-sacrificing work . . . . it would have been, of course, impossible to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half years, or even for two and a half months." ("'Left Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder.")" Let us see what Lenin really said, including the part he even emphasized, but which A.P. felt necessary to replace with dots . . . . (LCW 31, p. 48): "In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions, which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have a membership of over four million and are formallynon-Party. Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions, and primarily, of course, of the all-Russia general trade union centre or bureau (the all-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions), are made up of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on the whole, we have a formally non-communist, flexible and relatively wide and very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the class and the masses, and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship is exercised. Without close contacts with the trade unions, and without their energetic support and devoted efforts, not only in economic, but also in military affairs, it would of course have been impossible for us to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of propaganda, agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with the leading trade union workers, but with influential trade union workers generally; they call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from an ideological defense of (bourgeois) democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be "independent" (independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc., etc." One can only wonder why a revolutionary like A.P. would have been so willing to drop the phrase "not only in economic, but also in military affairs" from this very important work of Lenin's, a good portion of which contained material about trade unions, and even a little about industrial unions. In that passage, Lenin described the close relation between the Bolshevik Party and the unions, but, in spite of A.P.'s inclusion of the portion about 'the closest connection with the trade unions', the reader would still have to guess as to whom or what the trade unions were supposed to be close. In a theoretical work such as A.P.'s, one would have expected at least a small comment on the obvious conflict between the Bolshevik policy of close cooperation between party and union, and the SLP principle of independence between the two, but we unfortunately got nothing of substance.2 "If this were true in Russia, if in such a low economic organism the union played so important a role, how much more essential would it not be in an economic organism of such high order as the United States where the very conditions cry out for revolutionary economic organizations? From his little excerpt from Lenin, A.P. projected a sense of amazement, as though some unnamed principle had been violated by trade unions playing an important role in a technologically backward country like Russia. The amazement probably had a lot to do with the numbers game that we have been treated to, namely, downplaying the percentage of workers among the Russian population vs. the allegedly greater percentage of American workers among the American population, while no percentages were ever offered as evidence. A.P.'s assertions fueled a sense of awe at the thought: 'If trade unions were so important in Russia with its tiny proletariat, then the unions would be SUPER-important in the USA, where the percentage of workers is so much greater.' What a fantastic opportunity, then, for socialists to run after those hordes of unorganized workers and gather them into SIUs. But, merely apage away from where A.P. 'quoted' Lenin so briefly and incompletely, Lenin tackled precisely the theoretical arguments in favor of building new kinds of unions (LCW 31, pp. 49-50): "We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand new and immaculate "Workers' Union" invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc. "Capitalism inevitably leaves socialism the legacy, on the one hand, of the old trade and craft distinctions among the workers, distinctions evolved in the course of centuries; on the other hand, trade unions, which only very slowly, in the course of years and years, can and will develop into broader industrial unions with less of the craft union about them (embracing entire industries, and not only crafts, trades and occupations), and later proceed, through these industrial unions, to eliminate the division of labour among people, to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything. Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years. To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed, fully stabilised and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four. "We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion." It is quite clear from the above that Lenin was well aware of socialist thinking from all over the world. He clearly opposed ultra-left efforts to organize alternative types of unions in order to avoid the difficulties of working within the old trade unions. But, A.P. was as loath to comment on this contradiction with Leninism as he was to comment on how SLP views onindependence of unions from parties contradicted Marxism.3 'To De Leon there never was any question as to the possibility of organizing the workers industrially. To question that was to question the possibility of accomplishing the social revolution.' Once again, A.P. got his terms confused, as to him the 'social revolution' meant the immediate passage from capitalism to classless and stateless society; but, what Marx meant by amodern social revolution was the abolition of capital and class distinctions, a relatively protracted process coeval with the era of proletarian political supremacy. That's not all. Surprisingly enough, and due to the dramatic changes in lifestyles brought about by the relatively new capitalist mode of production, Marx and Engels regarded capitalism itself to be nothing short of a true social revolution.4 '"To ... practise political Socialism, is a dastardly deception practised upon the proletariat"' ... After Europe failed to support the Russian Revolution with long-lasting revolutions of its own, the practice of any kind of property-grabbing socialism on the working class became a business of dastardly deception, but it may take a few more years for that bit of truth to be accepted. * * * The rest of Part II of "PD vs. D+D" (pp. 49-52) contained more quotes from De Leon, John Stuart Mill and Lewis Henry Morgan, and ended with an appeal to workers to organize industrially to control the economy, and not to worry about politics. It also repeated many theories already analyzed or yet to be analyzed, so, relatively speaking, it didn't seem particularly productive to analyze the rest of Part II at this time.The Role of Force In Part III, we arrive at an important aspect of Marxism that no SLP theoreticians were willing to portray accurately: the matter of violent revolution, or peaceful evolution ("PD vs. D+D", p. 53):p. 53:"III"BLOODY OR PEACEFUL REVOLUTION."What is Force? "In discussing the change from capitalism the question is invariably posed: Can it be done peacefully? There are two superstitions prevalent in this connection; one is that the revolution must necessarily be peaceful; the other, that it must necessarily be bloody. Neither is inevitable, but as De Leon so eloquently pointed out, with the working class organized politically and industrially, the chances are in favor of a peaceful revolution. But every Marxist agrees that no successful revolution is possible without force. The question presents itself: What do we mean by force? "Force," said Marx, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power." ("Capital.") {1} Mark that carefully: "Force is itself an economic power." Engels in his "Landmarks of Scientific Socialism" {2} observes that the revolver triumphs over the sword, and that "superior force is no mere act of the will but requires very real preliminary conditions for the carrying out of its purposes, especially mechanical instruments, the more highly developed of which have the superiority over the less highly developed. Furthermore [he continues] these tools must be produced, whence it appears that the producer of the more highly developed tool of force, commonly called weapon, triumphs over the producer of the less highly developed tool. In a word, the triumph of force depends upon the production of weapons, therefore upon economic power, on economic conditions, on the ability to organize actual material instruments..... Economic force is the control of the great industry ." Here again we have force reduced, in the final analysis, to economic power, to the ability to organize material instruments, as, for example, economic or Industrial Unions, and Engels, as you will observe, comes mighty close to saying just that.{3} "De Leon put it this way: ""....the 'physical force' called for by the revolutionary act lies inherent in the economic organization; .... the element of 'force' consists, not in military or other organization implying violence, but on the STRUCTURE of the economic organization, a structure of such nature that it parries violence against itself, shatters it, and thereby renders the exercise of violence in return unnecessary, at least secondary, or only incidental....." {4} "Frequently unthinking followers of Lenin {5} argue as if the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is synonymous with physical force and violence. Lenin very effectively dispelled this erroneous notion in his "Communist Saturdays" when he said: ""The Dictatorship of the Proletariat - as I have insisted several times, as, for instance, in my speech at the session of the Petrograd Soviet on May 13th - is not merely force used against the exploiter, and not even essentially force. The economic foundation of the revolutionary exercise of power, the guarantee of its permanence and success, consists in this: that the proletariat has created a higher form of social organization of labor than capitalism. That is the great thing." {6} "In "'Left Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder," Lenin observes that "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative" - which reduces the question to one of tactics adapted to particular countries and circumstances. {7} On the question of legal and illegal means Lenin said: "Inexperienced revolutionaries often think that legal means of struggle are opportunist, for the bourgeoisie often (especially in 'peaceful' non-revolutionary times) use such legal means to deceive and fool the workers. On the other hand, they think that illegal means in the struggle are revolutionary. This is not true."* {8}_________ "* "The Bolshevik 'boycott' of 'parliament' in 1905 enriched the [Russian] revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience, having shown that, by combining legal with illegal, parliamentary with non-parliamentary, forms of struggle, it may become necessary, and even essential, sometimes to be able to reject parliamentary forms. But to transfer this experience blindly, imitatively, uncritically, into different surroundings and different conditions is the greatest possible mistake." - Lenin, "'Left Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder."" {9} A.P. introduced this portion with some ideas about the possibility of a 'peaceful revolution', but common knowledge has it that 'revolutions are violent', while evolution is generally considered to be relatively peaceful. With the help of a few quotes out of context, A.P. then redefined force as mainly economic power, thus making it easy for some enthusiasts to agree with De Leon that: 'The proper structure of economic power in the USA would facilitate a peaceful revolution.' To help support De Leon's theory, Lenin was quoted to the effect that: 'The foundation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia was' 'a higher form of social organization of labor than capitalism'. All of this was intended to lend credibility to A.P.'s theory that 'revolution is a matter of form, and, in the USA, it's no more of a bother than simply uniting into the SIU form.' First, A.P. quoted Marx as having written in "Capital":1 '"Force ... is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power."' From Part VIII, Chapter XXXI of Capital, entitled "Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist", let's take a closer look at the paragraph from which A.P. quoted (MESW II, pp. 133-4): "The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power. "Of the Christian colonial system, W. Howitt, a man who makes a specialty of Christianity, says: ""The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth." "The history of the colonial administration of Holland - and Holland was the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century - "is one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, massacre, and meanness." {T. S. Raffles, "The History of Java," London, 1817} Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men, to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter, and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers." ... Marx went on for a few pages to chronicle the use of state power, brute force and atrocities by the capitalists as adjuncts to their pursuit of profits. In the paragraph A.P. quoted from, Marx made it quite clear that 'force is the power of the state', and that it took force to replace old feudal institutions with capitalist institutions. Out of all of the text showing how military force and changes in the form of state can have profound effects upon the development of economies, A.P. siphoned off just that single thought, "Force ... is itself an economic power", and the way that A.P. used it was to simply equate force with economic power, as if it could be expressed mathematically as 'Force = Economic Power.' To help 'prove' that 'Force = Economic Power', A.P. supplemented his equation by abusing an excerpt from "Anti-Dühring", in which Engels refuted the theories of the academic Eugen Dühring (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 199-200):"III"THE FORCE THEORY"(Continuation) "But let us look a little more closely at this omnipotent "force" of Herr Dühring's. Crusoe enslaved Friday "sword in hand." Where did he get the sword? Even on the imaginary islands of the Robinson Crusoe epic, swords have not, up to now, been known to grow on trees, and Herr Dühring provides no answer to this question. If Crusoe could procure a sword for himself, we are equally entitled to assume that one fine morning Friday might appear with a loaded revolver in his hand, and then the whole "force" relationship is inverted. Friday commands, and it is Crusoe who has to drudge. We must apologize to the readers for returning with such insistence to the Robinson Crusoe and Friday story, which properly belongs to the nursery and not to the field of science - but how can we help it? We are obliged to apply Herr Dühring's axiomatic method conscientiously, and it is not our fault if in doing so we have to keep all the time within the field of pure childishness. So, then, the revolver triumphs over the sword; and this will probably make even the most childish axiomatician comprehend that force is no mere act of the will, but requires the existence of very real preliminary conditions before it can come into operation, namely, instruments, the more perfect of which gets the better of the less perfect; moreover, that these instruments have to be produced, which implies that the producer of more perfect instruments of force, commonly called arms, gets the better of the producer of the less perfect instruments, and that, in a word, the triumph of force is based on the production of arms, and this in turn on production in general - therefore, on "economic power," on the "economic situation," on the material means which force has at its disposal." A word of explanation: The thesis from which Herr Dühring had operated was that (and Engels quoted Dühring directly on this point, Ibid., p. 190): ... ""the primary must be sought indirect political force and not in any indirect economic power."" Dühring had criticized socialists for claiming the opposite, viz., that 'the primary must be sought in economic power', but Engels observed that, 'in all 3 volumes of his writings, Dühring had not made a single attempt to prove his own thesis, never mind prove the socialists incorrect.' At the urging of his colleagues, Engels took on the refutation of Herr Dühring. While revisiting the Crusoe and Friday story, Engels turned Herr Dühring's lessons back on their feet. The parts that A.P. chose to extract, such as 'the revolver triumphing over the sword', etc., the reader may notice were from the parts of Engels' rebuttal to Dühring that Engels thought were childishly simple, and yet, A.P. handed off those excerpts as though they represented the acme of Engels's intellect. A.P. was oblivious as well to Engels' statement within the same paragraph: 'the triumph of force is based on the production of arms'. Had A.P. not had his blinders on to such statements, he would have seen in the very next paragraph of Engels' text that 'force and economic power are two entirely different things', and we would have been spared the chore of having to refute him on this point. Engels' next paragraph continued in a less childish manner (Ibid., p. 200): "Force, nowadays, is the army and navy, and both, as we all know to our cost, are "devilishly expensive." Force, however, cannot make any money; at most it can take away money that has already been made - and this does not help much either - as we have seen, also to our cost, in the case of the French milliards.*__________ * "This is a reference to the 5,000 million francs that France paid to Germany as an indemnity in 1871-73 under the terms of the peace treaty, after her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71." {Note by Progress Publishers.} "In the last analysis, therefore, money must be provided through the medium of economic production; and so once more force is conditioned by the economic situation, which furnishes the means for the equipment and maintenance of the instruments of force. But even that is not all. Nothing is more dependent on economic prerequisites than precisely army and navy. Armament, composition, organisation, tactics and strategy depend above all on the stage reached at the time in production and on communications. It is not the "free creations of the mind" of generals of genius that have had a revolutionizing effect here, but the invention of better weapons and the change in the human material, the soldiers; at the very most, the part played by generals of genius is limited to adapting methods of fighting to the new weapons and combatants." This paragraph, in which the dependence of force on economic conditions - and not their equality - could not have been avoided by A.P., for other elements of his argument came from several pages further along in the text, so he had to have at least read them. In his next several pages, Engels went on to recount the history of force, from the 14th century to the late 1800's. How dependent force was upon prevailing economic conditions was made clear by Engels throughout, and his timeless descriptions require the inclusion of a few relevant passages (Ibid., pp. 204-8): "The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism also bears within itself the seed of its own destruction. Competition among the individual states forces them, on the one hand, to spend more money each year on the army and navy, artillery, etc., thus more and more hastening their financial collapse; and, on the other hand, to resort to universal compulsory military service more and more extensively, thus in the long run making the whole people familiar with the use of arms, and therefore enabling them at a given moment to make their will prevail against the war-lords in command. And this moment will arrive as soon as the mass of the people - town and country workers and peasants - will have a will. At this point the armies of the princes become transformed into armies of the people; the machine refuses to work, and militarism collapses by the dialectics of its own evolution. What the bourgeois democracy of 1848 could not accomplish, just because it was bourgeois and not proletarian, namely, to give the labouring masses a will whose content would be in accord with their class position - socialism will infallibly secure. And this will mean the bursting asunder from within of militarism and with it of all standing armies. "That is the first moral of our history of modern infantry. The second moral, which brings us back again to Herr Dühring, is that the whole organization and method of warfare, and along with these victory or defeat, prove to be dependent on material, that is, economic conditions: on the human material and the armaments material, and therefore on the quality and quantity of the population and on technical development. "In short, always and everywhere it is the economic conditions and the instruments of economic power which help "force" to victory, without which force ceases to be force. "In this sphere {naval armaments} it is most palpably evident that the "direct political force" which, according to Herr Dühring, is the "decisive cause of the economic situation," is on the contrary completely subordinate to the economic situation, that not only the construction but also the operation of the marine instruments of force, the warship, has itself become a branch of modern large-scale industry. And that this is so distresses no one more than force itself, that is, the state, which has now to pay for one ship as much as a whole small fleet used to cost; which has to resign itself to seeing these expensive vessels become obsolete, and therefore worthless, even before they slide into the water; and which must certainly be just as disgusted as Herr Dühring that the man of the "economic situation," the engineer, is now of far greater importance on board than the man of "direct force," the captain. We, on the contrary, have absolutely no cause to be vexed when we see that, in this competitive struggle between armour-plating and guns, the warship is being developed to a pitch of perfection which is making it both outrageously costly and unusable in war {due to the invention of the torpedo; according to a note by Engels}, and that this struggle makes manifest also in the sphere of naval warfare those inherent dialectical laws of motion on the basis of which militarism, like every other historical phenomenon, is being brought to its doom in consequence of its own development. "Here, too, therefore we see absolutely clearly that it is not by any means true that "the primary must be sought in direct political force and not in any indirect economic power." On the contrary. For what in fact does "the primary" in force itself prove to be? Economic power, the disposal of the means of power of large-scale industry. Naval political force, which reposes on modern warships, proves to be not at all "direct" but on the contrary mediated by economic power, highly developed metallurgy, command of skilled technicians and highly productive coal-mines." Notice that A.P.'s 'translation' had Engels saying: "Economic force is the control of the great industry." In the middle of the last paragraph, however, the Progress Publishers' versionreads (Ibid., p. 208): "For what in fact does "the primary" in force itself prove to be? Economic power, the disposal of the means of power of large-scale industry." Engels' very unambiguous statement can only be read as: 'Economic power is the primary in force', but A.P. 'quoted': "Economic force is the control of the great industry." Once again, A.P. either twisted words around until he got what he wanted, or else he was simply a victim of a totally incompetent translator. But, is there a snowball's chance in hell that anytranslation could have been that bad, or that A.P. could have missed all of the information in the text that contradicted the very points that he wanted to make? Aside from A.P.'s 'mistakes', notice how little that things have changed in over 100 years of technological evolution. Ships obsolete before launch, the devilishly expensive technology, the increasing dependence upon engineers and technicians to run the expensive technology, the permanent place of militarism in the economy, the bankruptcies of the states because of it, and the unusability of certain new weapons (Notice how often the world powers are using their nuclear arms!). And Engels showed how he believed militarism itself would come to an end (Ibid., p. 205 and again at p. 208): ... "socialism ... will mean the bursting asunder from within of militarism and with it of all standing armies." ... "militarism, like every other historical phenomenon, is being brought to its doom in consequence of its own development." In a November 3, 1892 letter to Paul Lafargue, Engels further related the effects of new technology on socialist tactics (ELC III, p. 208): ... "You will have seen the reports in the papers of the ghastly effects, in Dahomey, of the new [melinite] projectiles. A young Viennese doctor who has just arrived here (ex-assistant to Nothnagel) saw the wounds made by the Austrian projectiles in the Nürmitz strike, and he tells us the same thing. There's no doubt that people in danger of being shot to bits in this manner will want to know why. It's a capital thing for maintaining peace, but also for curbing the inclinations of so-called revolutionaries, on whose outbursts our governments count. The era of barricades and street fighting has gone for good; if the military fight, resistance becomes madness. Hence the necessity to find new revolutionary tactics. I have pondered over this for some time and am not yet settled in my mind." ... Even as late as 1892, it looks as though the important thing for Engels was the capture of political supremacy by any means necessary, though the matter of revolutionary tactics seemed to be somewhat troublesome.2 "Landmarks of Scientific Socialism" ... This was a rather obscure name (associated with the Charles Kerr editions) of the major work commonly recognized by the name: Anti-Duhring. In spite of what Engels actually wrote about force and economic power, A.P. continued to claim his right to 'interpret' Engels very loosely (p. 54):3 ... '"Economic force is the control of the great industry." Here again we have force reduced, in the final analysis, to economic power, to the ability to organize material instruments, as, for example, economic or Industrial Unions, and Engels, as you will observe, comes mighty close to saying just that.' A more appreciative audience might be nodding in agreement with A.P., but did Engels really reduce 'force' to 'economic power'? And from one passage demonstrated to have been butchered by a cleaver? Both the context and words of Engels clearly showed that force is the power of the state and is dependent upon economic power. Force can also direct the economy along certain lines of development, such as by building up militarism; or by replacing old feudal institutions with modern capitalist institutions, or even by replacing the state with a state of the workers, as Engels wrote to Schmidt in October of 1890 (MESW III, p. 494): ... "And why do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat if political power is economically impotent? Force (that is, state power) is also an economic power!" ... Engels would have used the political supremacy of the workers to re-organize labor along new lines, plan the economy, and eliminate anarchy in production. In that way, the proletarian dictatorship was to have become a potent economic power acting for the good of the lower classes. Such a sweet dream. After all of his falsifying, and, in a remarkable stretch of perhaps even his own expansive imagination, A.P. interpreted his own fabrications to include the possibility that Engels had come 'mighty close' 'to reducing force to the ability to organize Socialist Industrial Unions', with no more indication of Engels' intent to say that than he indicated his conversion toanarchism. But, A.P. didn't stop there (p. 54):4 "De Leon put it this way: "". . . . the 'physical force' called for by the revolutionary act lies inherent in the economic organization; . . . . the element of 'force' consists, not in military or other organization implying violence, but on the STRUCTURE of the economic organization, a structure of such nature that it parries violence against itself, shatters it, and thereby renders the exercise of violence in return unnecessary, at least secondary, or only incidental. . . . ." De Leon's contrived response reflects the extent to which the promise of peaceful democratic change had so permeated popular consciousness that even the state-smashing program of anarchy had to adapt to the promise of peaceful change in order to vie for any place at all in the marketplace of ideas. And what theoretical exposition on force would be complete without a quote from Lenin? A.P. obliged us with (p. 54):5 "Frequently unthinking followers of Lenin argue as if the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is synonymous with physical force and violence. Lenin very effectively dispelled this erroneous notion in his "Communist Saturdays" when he said: First, look at how 'Frequently unthinking followers of Lenin argue' ... Was this supposed to mean that 'followers of Lenin frequently don't think'? Without a comma after 'Frequently', the meaning of that particular combination of words remains quite ambiguous. If 'Lenin's followers frequently don't think', then how often do A.P.'s followers think? A.P. then quoted Lenin fairly accurately:6 ""The Dictatorship of the Proletariat - as I have insisted several times, as, for instance, in my speech at the session of the Petrograd Soviet on May 13th - is not merely force used against the exploiter, and not even essentially force. The economic foundation of the revolutionary exercise of power, the guarantee of its permanence and success, consists in this: that the proletariat has created a higher form of social organization of labor than capitalism. That is the great thing." Waht A.P. gave us needs to be compared to the actual passage from "A Great Beginning" (LCW 29, pp. 419-20): "It was natural and inevitable in the first period after the proletarian revolution that we should be engaged primarily on the main and fundamental task of overcoming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, of vanquishing the exploiters, of crushing their conspiracy (like the "slave-owners' conspiracy" to surrender Petrograd, in which all from the Black Hundreds and Cadets to the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were involved). But simultaneously with this task, another task comes to the forefront just as inevitably and ever more imperatively as time goes on, namely, the more important task of positive communist construction, the creation of new economic relations, of a new society. "As I have had occasion to point out more than once, among other occasions in the speech I delivered at a session of the Petrograd Soviet on March 12, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only the use of force against the exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force. The economic foundation of this use of revolutionary force, the guarantee of its effectiveness and success is the fact that the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism. This is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable. "The feudal organisation of social labour rested on the discipline of the bludgeon, while the working people, robbed and tyrannised by a handful of landowners, were utterly ignorant and downtrodden. The capitalist organisation of social labour rested on the discipline of hunger, and, notwithstanding all the progress of bourgeois culture and bourgeois democracy, the vast mass of the working people in the most advanced, civilised and democratic republics remained an ignorant and downtrodden mass of wage-slaves or oppressed peasants, robbed and tyrannised by a handful of capitalists. The communist organisation of social labour, the first step towards which is socialism, rests, and will do so more and more as time goes on, on the free and conscious discipline of the working people themselves who have thrown off the yoke both of the landowners and capitalists. "This new discipline does not drop from the skies, nor is it born from pious wishes; it grows out of the material conditions of large-scale capitalist production, and out or them alone. Without them it is impossible. And the repository, or the vehicle, of these material conditions is a definite historical class, created, organised, united, trained, educated and hardened by large-scale capitalism. This class is the proletariat." A.P. thought Lenin could be enlisted as an ally in 'dispelling the erroneous notion' that the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" is synonymous with physical force and violence', but, in actual fact, Lenin stated in the paragraph just above the one A.P. quoted (and in many more places) that: 'until things settle down after the revolution, the revolutionary dictatorship IS synonymous with just that very physical force and violence against the exploiters as they struggle 'ten times stronger' to resume their exploitation over the lower classes.' Could A.P. have missed the paragraph right above the one he chose to start his quote? Only if he had his blinders on. In that paragraph, Lenin used the following words, all of which imply force and violence "in the first period after the proletarian revolution" (LCW 29, p. 419): ... 'overcoming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, of vanquishing the exploiters, of crushing their conspiracy' ... In his quest to sway the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat away from that of 'waging a civil war against exploiters', A.P. reproduced passages from Lenin that reflected the goals of economic reconstruction after the problems of consolidating the political revolution had been resolved. A.P. incorrectly portrayed 'constructive economic activities' as the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat for the period of time when violence and civil war are at the forefront of activity, both for the exploited and the exploiters. Look also at the historical context of Lenin's quote: By the time "A Great Beginning" appeared in the middle of 1919, the Bolsheviks had been in power for over a year, and Lenin was looking forward to economic advances to ensure the permanence of the revolution. The subtitle of "A Great Beginning" just happens to be "Heroism of the Workers in the Rear. Communist Subbotniks." In other words, workers and peasants who were not already risking their lives at the war front were encouraged to sacrifice their spare time and do Subbotnik (overtime) labor, producing food and materials for use at the war front, or wherever else their labor was needed. But once again, A.P. was expecting his readers to lay their intelligence aside, and hopefully never read another thing about the Russian revolution, and thus allow themselves to be led to believe that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat primarily means a peaceful economic reconstruction of society.' A.P. continued (p. 55):7 "In "'Left Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder," Lenin observes that "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative" - which reduces the question to one of tactics adapted to particular countries and circumstances." Let's compare what A.P. gave us with a more official translation (LCW 31, p. 44): "The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle - bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative - against the forces and traditions of the old society." A.P. would not allow it to be known that "The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle" ... Also, where Lenin wrote "bloody", A.P. used the more obscure "sanguinary", which, according to my dictionary, means 'bloodthirsty' and 'murderous'. Maybe A.P. was hoping that the words he chose would reinforce the notion that 'any but a SIU peaceful revolution could only be a murderous or bloodthirsty affair'. Let's also look on a more macroscopic level at what A.P. did with that quote (p. 55): '"The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative" - which reduces the question to one of tactics adapted to particular countries and circumstances.' Instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat being all of the above things, and all at the same time, as Lenin doubtlessly intended, A.P. instead implied that Lenin provided us with a menu of 'tactics' from which we can 'pretty much as we see fit' take our pick and select the ones we might think are appropriate to our countries or circumstances. The 'tactics' that A.P. liked best and would probably pick for 'American conditions' would be 'bloodless, peaceful, economic', and probably both 'educational and administrative'; but he most certainly would have left 'bloody', 'violent', and 'military' for Russia. There was no literary crime which A.P. would not commit. He had such contempt for the intelligence of his readers that his lies got downright humorous sometimes. Perhaps there's a lesson here that A.P. did not want to teach. By consistently teaching something other than what Marx, Engels and Lenin intended, and many times even the opposite, but by our taking notice of it, we may have managed to learn. And by closely examining what A.P. was very careful to distort and falsify, it could very well be that, by our negating A.P.'s negations, we have taught ourselves the most critical lessons that the upper classes did not want us to learn at that time. It was my good fortune for having discovered this, and for having had such a good teacher as A.P., who may have ended up being the best teacher of the lessons of the age that most needed to be learned - by falsifying them, and then leaving us to our own devices. On the question of legality, A.P. quoted Lenin again (p. 55):8 "On the question of legal and illegal means Lenin said: "Inexperienced revolutionaries often think that legal means of struggle are opportunist, for the bourgeoisie often (especially in 'peaceful' non-revolutionary times) use such legal means to deceive and fool the workers. On the other hand, they think that illegal means in the struggle are revolutionary. This is not true."" From the above, it would be very easy to conclude that Lenin was a champion of legal and only legal means of struggle for the revolution. But, let's examine the wider context of Lenin's words (LCW 31, pp. 96-7): "Unless we learn to apply all the methods of struggle, we may suffer grave and sometimes even decisive defeat, if changes beyond our control in the position of the other classes bring to the forefront a form of activity in which we are especially weak. If, however, we learn to use all the methods of struggle, victory will be certain, because we represent the interests of the really foremost and really revolutionary class, even if circumstances do not permit us to make use of weapons that are most dangerous to the enemy, weapons that deal the swiftest mortal blows. Inexperienced revolutionaries often think that legal methods of struggle are opportunist because, in this field, the bourgeoisie has most frequently deceived and duped the workers (particularly in "peaceful" and non-revolutionary times), while illegal methods are revolutionary. That, however, is wrong. The truth is that those parties and leaders are opportunist and traitors to the working class that are unable or unwilling (do not say "I can't"; say, "I shan't") to use illegal methods of struggle in conditions such as those which prevailed, for example, during the imperialist war of 1914-18, when the bourgeoisie of the freest democratic countries most brazenly and brutally deceived the workers, and smothered the truth about the predatory character of the war. But revolutionaries who are incapable of combining illegal forms of struggle with every form of legal struggle are poor revolutionaries indeed." Lenin's text went on with more advice for revolutionaries in the most advanced capitalist countries. To have missed the lessons of those words, A.P. once again must have had his blinders on. The clever part about taking a quote out of context is that the perpetrator can point to the quote and claim that the author had indeed written those very words, and, indeed, though the words sometimes are not exactly synonymous, or don't appear exactly in the same order as in the Progress Publishers Editions, A.P. did quote many words of approximately the same meaning as Lenin's. A few who read this may claim that: 'Only a nit-picker would claim that A.P. did not impart the intent of Lenin's words.' The intent, perhaps, in a few cases. But, did A.P.'s excerpts include the whole idea? And there's the rub. For, while paying lip-service to Lenin's writings, A.P. often used Lenin's words to convey ideas that bore little to no resemblance to Lenin's original intentions. While A.P. quoted Lenin only in part, and to the effect that 'illegal means are not revolutionary', Lenin's text, to the contrary, clearly stated that 'the proletariat must use both legal and illegal means.' And of what 'nefarious' mechanisms did these illegal means consist? Nothing more outrageous than ordinary revolutionary propaganda, for, if propaganda opportunities and other forms of expression were denied by law, they thus became 'illegal'; and where in the world has revolutionary ideology ever been welcomed by the upper classes? Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian capitalists sometimes locked workers out of their workplaces. What 'illegal' means did Lenin suggest for raising the morale of the workers without provoking bloodshed? Nothing more 'rrrrevolutionary' than the secret printing of leaflets announcing demonstrations, since freedom of the press was denied to them. In my readings of Lenin, nothing more 'rrrrevolutionary' than exercises of freedom of speech and press (freedoms that are so often taken for granted in America) were advocated, though suchexpressions were often deemed illegal by the czarist standards of the time. In his 1919 article "The Tasks of the Third International", Lenin defined illegal work (LCW 29, pp. 504-5): "Secondly, legal work must be combined with illegal work. The Bolsheviks have always taught this, and did so with particular insistence during the war of 1914-18. The heroes of despicable opportunism ridiculed this and smugly extolled the "legality", "democracy", "liberty" of the West-European countries, republics, etc. Now, however, only out-and-out swindlers, who deceive the workers with phrases, can deny that the Bolsheviks proved to be right. In every single country in the world, even the most advanced and "freest" of the bourgeois republics, bourgeois terror reigns, and there is no such thing as freedom to carry on agitation for the socialist revolution, to carry on propaganda and organisational work precisely in this sense. The party which to this day has not admitted this under the rule of the bourgeoisie and does not carry on systematic, all-sided illegal work in spite of the laws of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois parliaments is a party of traitors and scoundrels who deceive the people by their verbal recognition of revolution. The place for such parties is in the yellow, Berne International. There is no room for them in the Communist International." To me, for a long time, the term "illegal work" had connotations of nefarious, criminal activity, and A.P.'s treatment of the subject did nothing at all to help correct that misconception, nor did he define 'illegal work' in terms of what it really is - the natural and democratic tendencies of the lower classes to express themselves and communicate their concerns, in spite of censorship. The question of legality also come up with Marx and Engels. In an April 1895 letter to Kautsky, Engels complained of the maltreatment his latest Introduction to "The Class Struggles in France" had received at the hands of worried editors (MESC, p. 461): ... "To my astonishment I see in the Vorw?rts today an extract from my "Introduction", printed without my prior knowledge and trimmed in such a fashion that I appear as a peaceful worshipper of legality at any price. So much the better that the whole thing is to appear now in the Neue Zeit so that this disgraceful impression will be wiped out. I shall give Liebknecht a good piece of my mind on that score and also, no matter who they are, to those who gave him the opportunity to misrepresent my opinion without even telling me a word about it" ... A.P. quoted Lenin on the subject of legal methods in a footnote (p. 55):9 "The Bolshevik 'boycott' of 'parliament' in 1905 enriched the [Russian] revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience, having shown that, by combining legal with illegal, parliamentary with non-parliamentary, forms of struggle, it may become necessary, and even essential, sometimes to be able to reject parliamentary forms. But to transfer this experience blindly, imitatively, uncritically, into different surroundings and different conditions is the greatest possible mistake." - Lenin, "'Left Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder."" At first, I found it difficult to figure out what point A.P. was trying to make by using this particular quote from Lenin. I first speculated that it might have been a sop to those who suspected that Lenin had always been a strong advocate of illegal methods and were wondering when A.P. was finally going to at least hint of that possibility. Later, I realized that theitalics in A.P.'s version of the quote were supposed to drive home the message that 'illegal means were more appropriate to Soviet conditions than to American conditions, so Americans shouldn't use them.' Here is the Progress Publisher's version of that passage (LCW 31, pp. 35-6): "The Bolsheviks' boycott of "parliament" in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal, parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations. The Bolsheviks' boycott of the Duma in 1906 was a mistake, although a minor and easily remediable one. (What applies to individuals also applies - with necessary modifications - to politics and parties. It is not he who makes no mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them easily and quickly that is intelligent.) The boycott of the Duma in 1907, 1908 and subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy, because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its conversion into an uprising was not to be expected, and, on the other hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined. Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes most obvious that in 1908-14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened and developed) the core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it wasobligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws (sick benefit societies, etc.)." According to Lenin, it is rather foolish to boycott reactionary institutions. In the old days, at least, the SLP ruled that 'no member can seriously run for government office with the expectation of serving in the same manner as any other politician', probably because it was felt that 'members who exercise duties of office would betray the interests of the working class, because the government expresses only the interests of the ruling class.' While it is true that anarchists have been some of the sharpest critics of parliamentarism, Marx, Engels and Lenin felt that the working class should learn to make use of reactionary institutions, even while maintaining a healthy criticism of what goes on therein. In his August 28, 1919 "Letter to Sylvia Pankhurst" of London, Lenin wrote about the importance of working in parliaments (LCW 29, p. 564): "But the critics of parliamentarism in Europe and America, when they are anarchists or anarcho-syndicalists, are very often wrong insofar as they reject all participation in elections and parliamentary activity. Here they simply show their lack of revolutionary experience. We Russians, who have lived through two great revolutions in the twentieth century, are well aware what importance parliamentarism can have, and actually does have during a revolutionary period in general and in the very midst of a revolution in particular. Bourgeois parliaments must be abolished and replaced by Soviet bodies. There is no doubt about that. There is no doubt now, after the experience of Russia, Hungary, Germany and other countries, that thisabsolutely must take place during a proletarian revolution. Therefore, systematically to prepare the working masses for this, to explain to them in advance the importance of Soviet power, to conduct propaganda and agitation for it - all this is the absolute duty of the worker who wants to be a revolutionary in deeds. But we Russians fulfilled that task, operating in the parliamentary arena, too. In the tsarist, fake, landowners' Duma our representatives knew how to carry on revolutionary and republican propaganda. In just the same way Soviet propaganda can and must be carried on in and from within bourgeois parliaments." The lesson here is that lower classes have to use all of the avenues of struggle available, and, in a democracy, must participate in politics of all sorts without getting carried away with prospects of miracles simply if one of them gets elected. In a portion of "The State and Revolution", published in the period between Russia's bourgeois-democratic and proletarian revolutions, Lenin contrasted parliamentarism with the Commune (LCW 25, pp. 428-9): "The way out of parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into "working" bodies. "The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time." ""A working, not a parliamentary, body" - this is a blow straight from the shoulder at the present-day parliamentarians and parliamentary "lap-dogs" of Social-Democracy! Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to Britain, Norway and so forth - in these countries the real business of "state" is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the "common people". This is so true that even in the Russian republic, a bourgeois-democratic republic, all these sins of parliamentarism came out at once, even before it managed to set up a real parliament. ... "The Commune substitutes for the venal and rotten parliamentarism of bourgeois society institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not degenerate into deception, for the parliamentarians themselves have to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to test the results achieved in reality, and to account directly to their constituents. Representative institutions remain, but there is no parliamentarism here as a special system, as the division of labour between the legislative and the executive, as a privileged position for the deputies. We cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions, but we can and must imagine democracy without parliamentarism, if criticism of bourgeois society is not mere words for us, if the desire to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie is our earnest and sincere desire, and not a mere "election" cry for catching workers' votes, as it is with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and also the Scheidemanns and Legiens, the Sembats and Vanderveldes." A.P. moved on to the subject of 'armies' (p. 55):p. 55:"Military Force Analyzed and Rejected. "Disputing the contention that military force or power is superior to economic power, and that the workers should be organized in military units rather than in Industrial Unions, De Leon stated: ""A military organization implies not one, or two, it implies a number of things. Bombs, explosives, generally, may be left out of the reckoning. They may be of incidental, but not of exclusive use by an organized force. ""First of all powder is needed. The best of powder needs bullets and balls to do the business. The best of powder, bullets and balls are useless without guns. Nor are inferior guns of much avail when pitted against the up-to-date guns at the command of the capitalist class. The military organization of the revolutionary proletariat will need the most effective weapons. The question has often been asked from capitalist sources, Where will you get the money from to buy the railroads and the other capitalist plants? The question is silly. No one proposes, nor will there be any occasion, to 'buy' those things. Not silly, however, but extremely pertinent, is the question, Where will the proletariat get the billions needed to purchase such a military equipment? ""Suppose the billions be forthcoming. Weapons, in the hands of men unskilled in their use are dangerous, primarily, to those who hold them. Numbers, undrilled in military evolutions, only stand in one another's way. Where and how could these numbers practise in the use of their arms, and in the military drill? Where and how could they do the two things in secret? In public, of course, it would be out of question. ""Suppose, finally, that the problem of the billions were solved, and the still more insuperable problem of exercise and drill be overcome. Suppose the military organization of the proletariat took the field and triumphed. And then - it would immediately have to dissolve. Not only will it not have been able to afford the incidental protection that the revolutionary union could afford to the proletariat while getting ready, but all its implements, all the money that it did cost, all the tricks it will have learned, and the time consumed in learning them, will be absolutely lost. Its swords will have to be turned into pruning hooks, its guns into ploughshares; its knowledge to be unlearned. ""How would things stand with the integrally organized Industrial Union? ""First, its cost is trifling, positively within reach; ""Secondly, every scrap of information it gathers while organizing is of permanent value; ""Thirdly, it will be able to offer resistance to capitalist encroachments, and thereby to act as a breastwork for its members, while getting ready; ""Fourthly, and most significant and determining of all, the day of its triumph will be the beginning of the full exercise of its functions - the administration of the productive forces of the nation. ""The fourth consideration is significant and determining. It is the consideration that Social Evolution points the finger to, dictating the course that the proletariat must take; - dictating its goal; - dictating its methods; - dictating its means. The proletariat, whose economic badge is poverty; the proletariat, whose badge, the first of all revolutionary classes, is economic impotence; - for the benefit of that class, apparently treated so stepmotherly by Social Evolution, Social Evolution has wrought as it has wrought for none other. It has builded the smithy of capitalist industrial concentration; and, in keeping with the lofty mission of the working class to abolish class rule on earth, Social Evolution has gathered ready for the fashioning, not the implements of destruction, but the implements of future peace, withal the most potent weapon to clear the field of the capitalist despot - the industrially ranked toilers. The industrially organized Industrial Union is the weapon that Social Evolution places within the grasp of the proletariat as the means for their emancipation." "There should be no doubt in the minds of reasonable men that here, once and for all, De Leon disposed of that particular question." De Leon disposed of the question of force vs. peaceful solutions oh, so well, and A.P. learned the 'brilliant' method behind it, viz., setting up straw-man arguments, and describing thedestruction of those arguments as strokes of genius, especially if De Leon exercised his gray matter to do it. It would have been more appropriate if this chapter had been entitled: 'Revolution for Idiots.' To imagine, in the freest democratic republic in the world at the time (and still very free), thatthe working class might want to contemplate coming to power by organizing itself into an army, buying all the weapons it needs from the capitalists (thus putting some of the workers back to work), but not being able to drill for want of a secret training field, but, once having won their great battle against the capitalist army some fine day, they would then have to dissolve their army immediately - Well, if this is the scenario that the workers would have to act out in the absence of Socialist Industrial Unionism, then I, for one, would most certainly prefer the SIU! But, isn't there any other scenario that is less absurd? Engels' lessons from "Anti-Dühring", on the other hand, about the disintegration of the army from within is something that really happens in revolutionary situations. Not being one to reject violence under all circumstances, Marx advocated general military training, as reflected in Part 10 of his August, 1866, "Instructions for Delegates of the Provisional General Council" of the First International (MESW II, pp. 84-5):"10. ARMIES "(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point. "(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms. "(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies." Notice that Marx considered the deleterious effects of armies upon production to have been an issue well covered by the middle classes. In a letter to Terzaghi of Jan. 14, 1872, while the battle against the anti-authoritarian anarchists was raging in the International, Engels mourned the lack of authority with which theCommunards had pursued their goal (NW 153, p. 68): ... "I believe the terms "Authority" and centralisation are being greatly abused. I know nothing more authoritarian than a revolution, and when one's will is imposed on others with bombs and bullets, as in every revolution, it seems to me an act of authority is being committed. It was the lack of centralisation and authority that cost the Paris Commune its life. Do what you like with authority, etc., after the victory, but for the struggle we must unite all our forces in one fascio {fist} and concentrate them at one point of attack. And when I am told that authority and centralisation are two things that should be condemned under all possible circumstances it seems to me that those who say so either do not know what a revolution is or are revolutionaries in name only" ... Lenin had a similar dispute with Karl Kautsky on the question of disarming after victory. In his October 1918 short version of "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", Lenin waxed emotional about Kautsky's conclusions (LCW 28, p. 109): "I must mention, in passing, a few gems of his renegacy. "Kautsky has to admit that the Soviet form of organisation is of world-wide, and not only of Russian significance, that it is one of the "most important phenomena of our times", and that it promises to acquire decisive significance" in the future great "battles between capital and labour". But, imitating the wisdom of the Mensheviks, who have happily sided with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, Kautsky "deduces" that the Soviets are all right as "battle organisations", but not as "state organisations". "Marvelous! Form up in Soviets, you proletarians and poor peasants! But, for God's sake, don't you dare win! Don't even think of winning! The moment you win and vanquish the bourgeoisie, that will be the end of you; for you must not be "state" organisations in a proletarian state. In fact, as soon as you have won you must break up! "What a marvelous Marxist this man Kautsky is! What an inimitable "theoretician" of renegacy!" As little as Kautsky wanted the soviets to wield state power, neither did the SLP want American workers to win any victory except at the ballot box, and then sabotage its own victory by disbanding both the state and the party. A.P. continued to describe the Party's 'peaceful solution' (p. 58):p. 58:"De Leon on Peaceful Solution. "In "Socialist Reconstruction of Society" De Leon develops the question of a peaceful solution fully. Speaking of "the consummation of that ideal so dearly pursued by the Socialist {1}- THE PEACEFUL SOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION," he points out that while in Europe a peaceful solution is out of the question, here it is otherwise. {2} Here the capitalist is essentially a swindler, and "the swindler," says De Leon, "is a coward." {3} He adds: "Like a coward, he will play the bully, as we see the capitalist class doing, toward the weak, the weak because disorganized, working class. Before the strong, the bully crawls. Let the political temperature rise to the point of danger, then, all monkeying with the thermometer notwithstanding, your capitalist will quake in his stolen boots; he will not dare to fight; he will flee {4} .....The complete industrial organization of the working class will then have insured the peaceful issue of the struggle. {5} But perhaps the capitalist may not flee. Perhaps, in a delirium of rage, he may resist. So much the worse - for him. The might, implied in the industrial organization of the working class of the land, will be in position to mop the earth with the rebellious usurper in short order and safeguard the right that the ballot proclaimed."" {6} In this excerpt, A.P. and De Leon made the following points:1 'The peaceful solution to the social question is an ideal dearly pursued by the socialist.' As for 'socialist ideals', Engels said it best in an August 1884 letter to Paul Lafargue (ELC II, p. 235): ... "Marx would protest against the economic "political and social ideal" which you attribute to him. When one is a "man of science," one does not have an ideal; one works out scientific results, and when one is a party man to boot, one fights to put them into practice. But when one has an ideal, one cannot be a man of science, for one starts out with preconceptions." ... Because socialist revolutionism is obsolete, what the class abolitionist 'dearly pursues' is full participation in the economy for the lower classes, which, in our democracies, can be accomplished entirely peacefully, and without playing power and property games. Socialism, by definition, means socializing ownership of the means of production, which can bepeacefully accomplished only if compensation accompanies socialization of ownership. But, such socialization results in no more than state capitalism, which satisfies communists andanarchists not a whit.2 'The peaceful solution is obtainable in the USA, but not in Europe.' That notion was already becoming obsolete by the time of Marx's 1872 Speech at the Hague, and was totally obsolete by the time A.P. wrote his pamphlet. Western Europe by 1931 was FAR more democratic than ever before; few absolute monarchies remained to be overthrown, so peaceful change was as fit for Western Europe in 1931 as it was for the USA.3 'The capitalists are swindlers, cowards and bullies.' Here De Leon engaged in pure classism, as if a world that is full of racism, sexism, ageism, and perhaps other kinds of 'isms needs to be infected with yet another 'ism. Calling the capitalists names, as though they were any better, worse, inferior, or superior to any other economic class of people, is no way in which the struggle between rich and poor can bepeacefully won. Psychologically, name-calling can give activists a false sense of superiority, which can then paralyze them with pity for their 'inferior' upper class opponents.4 'The capitalists will flee at signs of danger presented by the lower classes.' Where exactly would the capitalists go? Workers have no intentions of physically endangering the rich, but the anarchists have a long history of voicing such intentions.5 'The complete industrial organization of the working class will then have insured the peaceful issue of the struggle.' Now it looks as though 'the SIU will insure peace', as though it will do it as part of the insurance industry. But, just in case peace is not our fate, we find the following:6 'The industrial organization of the working class will mop the earth with the resisters, if necessary, and protect the mandate won at the ballot box.' After all of his incantations over peaceful methods, here was his admission that the revolutionary expropriation may not go as idyllically as desired, even if the Party program were to be followed to the letter. It must have been suspected that the ruling class might not react very amiably to the radical loss of their property and their political and economic supremacy. But why threaten the upper classes with a scenario of 'losing everything they've ever worked, lived, breathed and fought for', when a reduction in the length of the work week to match the replacement of labor by machines would leave upper class values intact, and would only reduce the rate of exploitation of the workers? There surely must be a significant number of bosses willing to do something real about the rips and tears in the social fabric, and who would be willing to sacrifice a little wealth in order to gain a lot of security and peace of mind, just as they did in the Depression of the 1930's, when half of the businesses voluntarily instituted work-sharing by means of shorter work hours. Kellogg's didn't entirely phase out its 6-hour day until the late 1980's. If it worked before, it will work again.Nowhere to Run Next, A.P. assured us that 'victory is ours' (pp. 59-60):p. 59:"Shaking in Stolen Boots. "De Leon here spoke prophetically. For on a small scale we have had a concrete demonstration of the correctness of his contention that the capitalist is a coward who, in the hour of danger, will flee or surrender. {1} In 1918, shortly following the Bolshevik revolution, Charles M. Schwab, the steel magnate, in obvious panicky fear, declared: ""The time is coming when the men of the working classes, the men without property, will control the destinies of this world of ours. It means that the Bolshevik sentiment must be taken into consideration and in the very near future. We must look to the worker for a solution of the economic conditions now being considered. ""I am not one to carelessly turn over my belongings to the uplift of the nation, but I am one who has come to a belief that the worker will rule, and the sooner we come to a realization of this the better it will be for our country and the world at large. ""This great change is going to be a social adjustment. I repeat that it will be a great hardship to those who control property, but perhaps in the end it will work estimably to the good of us all. Therefore, it is our duty not to oppose, but to instruct, to meet, and to mingle with the views of others." {2} "Mr. Schwab is by no means alone in his fear of the proletarian revolution, {3} though all of the capitalists maynot be quite as chicken-hearted as "Weeping Charlie." That he is not alone in this dread of the impending doom of capitalism is indicated by a writer in a recent issue of the plutocratic newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune. In today's issue (December 13, 1931), this paper contains an article by Bruce Barton, a typical go-getter and apologist for capitalism. Mr. Barton says, in part, as follows: "A young man who is vice-president of a New York bank told me that he dined recently at a fashionable resort. 'All the other guests were very rich,' he said. 'They were older people, many of them retired. They were shaking in their boots. They are afraid there will be a social upheaval and that their money will be taken away.'" (Emphasis mine.) And Mr. Barton adds, quite properly, "I told him I thought these people had a right to worry." Yes, well may these capitalists, exploiters and useless parasites shake in their stolen boots. {4} Even if they do not all clearly perceive the handwriting on the wall, they possess like other beasts of prey, and wild creatures in general, a quality or a sense which warns them of impending storms and cataclysms. {5} If they all take the view expressed by Mr. Schwab, and act accordingly, they need not, however, fear anything worse than the prospect of life-long, useful labor - a prospect, which to them, indeed, may and undoubtedly does appear to be a dreadful one. {6} If on the other hand, they do not react to the coming change in the manner of the canny Charles M. Schwab, it will be just too bad for them. For the working class, properly organized, will possess supreme economic power, leaving little or no opportunity for rebellious capitalists to work any mischief." {7} Would capitalists get mad enough to fight if workers threatened total expropriation? I can't think of a better way to start a civil war and ensure violence than to threaten expropriation, but A.P. quoted a news reporter who assured us that the capitalist class is scared of the workers, and would flee during a revolution, though 'where to' wasn't mentioned.1 ... 'the capitalist is a coward who, in the hour of danger, will flee or surrender.' The brave A.P., who was never afraid to tell the truth, called the capitalist a "coward", as if cowardice were part and parcel of the condition of being rich. This is pure classism, i.e., ascribing an unpleasant characteristic to people solely on the basis of their membership in a different economic class. A.P. would have us believe that: 'Capitalists are cowardly exploiters, and workers are brave revolutionaries.' Who was A.P. trying to kid?2 ... '"I am one who has come to a belief that the worker will rule, and the sooner we come to a realization of this the better it will be for our country and the world at large. ... it is our duty not to oppose, but to instruct, to meet, and to mingle with the views of others."' A far-sighted capitalist like Mr. Schwab, who was quite capable of looking beyond the balance sheet, deserved much better treatment than the insults A.P. afforded him. Mr. Schwab was capable of dealing with a predicted dismal fate for his class with dignity, diplomacy, and with a sense of a need for classes to peacefully and calmly negotiate policies.3 "Mr. Schwab is by no means alone in his fear of the proletarian revolution, though all of the capitalists may not be quite as chicken-hearted as "Weeping Charlie."" In spite of the way Mr. Schwab distinguished himself with his willingness to negotiate with the lower classes, look at the fighting words that A.P. used! Is this the kind of language we should get from advocates of peaceful change in the USA? Such a knee-jerk rejection of negotiation with thoughtful individuals from other classes indicates an appalling lack of judgment, and was yet another affirmation of destructive anarchistic ideology. If A.P. was looking for violence, he couldn't have picked better words.4 "Yes, well may these capitalists, exploiters and useless parasites shake in their stolen boots." As to the question of 'stolen boots', the instructor of my old study class had a more civilized attitude to the question of 'theft' of the product of labor. He explained that the exploitation of labor takes place at the point of production, where all of the values that are produced are willingly given up in exchange for wages. It is not at all akin to robbery, where values are expropriated in exchange for nothing, while injury or worse may occur in conjunction with the theft.5 "Even if they do not all clearly perceive the handwriting on the wall, they possess like other beasts of prey, and wild creatures in general, a quality or a sense which warns them of impending storms and cataclysms." Once again, A.P. ranted, raved, and engaged in pure classism. The terms used to disparage the capitalist class include: 1 'useless parasites' 2 'beasts of prey' 3'wild creatures' After applying sub-human terms to the capitalists, how could any humane person fail to be moved to pity them as victims of the circumstance of simply being wealthy, often due to no fault of their own? Not very many of the rich complain about the natural tendency of the system to concentrate an increasing amount of wealth in their hands. Certainly there are some with hereditary wealth who play no active role in increasing the amount of wealth that flows to them, while the increasing productivity of labor continues to make the upper classes ever increasingly richer in comparison to the poor. Threatened by removal of their wealth by revolution, as A.P. put it, capitalists were portrayed as animals scurrying before a storm. And look at how the capitalists were seemingly endowed with an extra-human sense which warns them of impending storms and cataclysms. By verbally abusing the alleged scared and scurrying capitalists, and by causing the reader to feel pity for them, A.P. effectively paralyzed ardor for change in some activists, and probably caused others to feel as though nothing could be lost by going for a revolution. A great way to build mob sentiment and divide workers. Is that the kind of nonsense it takes to create an anarchist revolution in the USA? To fill the minds of the naive with classist nonsense, similar to the nonsense that racist organizations instill in their memberships? Or the nonsense that sexists try to attribute to their gender of choice?6 "If they all take the view expressed by Mr. Schwab, and act accordingly, they need not, however, fear anything worse than the prospect of life-long, useful labor - a prospect, which to them, indeed, may and undoubtedly does appear to be a dreadful one." As if expecting to be appointed Minister of Justice after the revolution, A.P. prematurely sentenced capitalists to a lifetime of labor. Such 1931ish boilerplate propaganda is a complete joke to 21st century activists with a weather eye on technological changes, and who suspect that the era of work will be over for everyone before 2030. Capitalists will no more be sent off to work than Bakunin will come back from the grave.7 'If on the other hand, they do not react to the coming change in the manner of the canny Charles M. Schwab, it will be just too bad for them. For the working class, properly organized, will possess supreme economic power, leaving little or no opportunity for rebellious capitalists to work any mischief.' There's nothing like embarking on the road to peaceful revolution by openly threatening the capitalist class with the 'supreme economic power' of the working class. What is this 'supreme economic power' but the ability to go out and buy anything a worker could desire? Does being 'properly organized' have anything to do with joining a buyer's club?War and Peace On pages 60-61 of "PD vs. D+D", A.P. continued with:p. 60:"Marx on Peaceful Solution. "We know, from their own words, that both Marx and Engels thought it possible to accomplish the revolution in a peaceful manner in such countries as England and America. In 1872 Marx, addressing a congress of the International at the Hague, said: ""The worker must one day capture political power in order to found the new organization of labor. He must reverse the old policy, which the old institutions maintain, if he will not, like the Christians of old who despised and neglected such things, renounce the things of this world. ""But we do not assert that the way to reach this goal is the same everywhere. ""We know that the institutions, the manners and the customs of the various countries must be considered, and we do not deny that there are countries like England and America, and, if I understood your arrangements better, I might even add Holland, where the worker may obtain his object by peaceful means. But not in all countries is this the case."" If we did not know A.P. as well as we do by now, we could ask why he did not include the portion about force at the end of the last sentence, such as what the version below includes. To show how different 'translations' can be from one book to the next, the entire excerpt is reproduced according to the text of the Progress Publisher's edition (MESW II, pp. 291-3): * THE HAGUE CONGRESS REPORTER'S RECORD OF THE SPEECH MADE AT THE MEETINGHELD IN AMSTERDAM ON SEPTEMBER 8, 1872 {Excerpt from Marx's Speech} "The Hague Congress did three principal things: "It proclaimed the necessity for the working classes to fight, in the political as well as the social sphere, against the old society, a society which is collapsing; and we are happy to see that the resolution of the London Conference is from now on included in our Rules.* A group had formed in our midst advocating the workers' abstention from politics. "We have thought it important to point out how very dangerous and baneful to our cause we considered these principles to be. "The worker will some day have to win political supremacy in order to organise labour along new lines; he will have to defeat the old policy supporting old institutions, under penalty - as in the case of the ancient Christians, who neglected and scorned it - of never seeing their kingdom on earth. "But we have by no means affirmed that this goal would be achieved by identical means. "We know of the allowances we must make for the institutions, customs and traditions of the various countries; and we do not deny that there are countries such as America, England, and I would add Holland if I knew your institutions better, where the working people may achieve their goal by peaceful means. If that is true, we must also recognise that in most of the continental countries it is force that will have to be the lever of our revolutions; it is force that we shall some day have to resort to in order to establish a reign of labour."___________ * FROM THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE GENERAL CONGRESS HELD IN THE HAGUE SEPTEMBER 2-7, 1872 I RESOLUTION ON THE RULES "That the following article summing up the content of Resolution IX of the London Conference (September 1871) be included in the rules after Article 7. "Article 7a. In its struggle against the collective power of the possessing classes the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself a distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the possessing classes. "This constitution of the proletariat into a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and of its ultimate goal: the abolition of classes. "The coalition of the forces of the working class, already achieved by the economic struggle, must also serve, in the hands of this class, as a lever in its struggle against the political power of its exploiters. "As the lords of the land and of capital always make use of their political privileges to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies and to enslave labour, the conquest of political power becomes the great duty of the proletariat. "Adopted by 29 votes against 5; 8 abstaining" ... Once again, A.P. would not let us know anything substantive about the battle between Marx and the anarchist Bakunin, the escalation of which battle prompted Marx to write thePolitical Action Resolution for the First International. But A.P. would never help put across the idea of workers having to exercise political initiative. What caused A.P. to substitute the word 'arrangements' for 'institutions'? Was it was the existence of the political institution of the democratic republic in Holland that made it theoretically possible for evolution to proceed peacefully there? Was it A.P.'s fear that a member might get the idea that democratic political institutions are valuable to workers that prompted him to change that word? Or was this just another 'difference in translations'? What was it in the "institutions, customs and traditions of the various countries" that made it possible for peaceful evolution to be envisaged in those countries? Marx understood England and America, at least, to be democratic enough for workers' parties to gain majorities in elections and embark on the road to socialism. The report on Marx's Speech at the Hague Congress continued with some quite interesting material (Ibid., p. 293): "The Hague Congress has vested the General Council with new and greater powers. Indeed, at a time when kings are gathered together in Berlin, where new and harsher measures of repression are to be adopted against us as a result of that meeting of powerful representatives of the feudal system and past times, and when persecution is being set on foot, the Hague Congress has deemed it wise and necessary to increase the powers of its General Council and to centralise, for the struggle that is about to begin, an action which isolation would render powerless. Besides, whom but our enemies could the authority of the General Council make suspicious? Has it, then, a bureaucracy and an armed police force to impose its will? Is not its authority purely moral, and does it not submit all its decisions to the federations which are entrusted with carrying them out? Under these conditions, kings without army, police and magistracy would be but feeble obstacles to the march of the revolution, were they ever reduced to maintaining their power through moral influence and authority. "Lastly, the Hague Congress has transferred the seat of the General Council to New York. Many people, even among our friends, seem to be surprised by that decision. Are they forgetting, then, that America is becoming a world chiefly of working people, that half a million persons - working people - emigrate to that continent every year, and that the International must take strong root in soil dominated by the working man? And then, the decision of the Congress authorises the General Council to co-opt such members as it may find necessary and useful for the good of the common cause. Let us hope that it will be wise enough to choose people who will be equal to their task and will be able to bear firmly the banner of our Association in Europe. "Citizens, let us think of the fundamental principle of the International, solidarity! It is by establishing this vivifying principle on a strong basis, among all the working people of all countries, that we shall achieve the great goal we have set ourselves. The revolution needs solidarity, and we have a great example of it in the Paris Commune, which fell because a great revolutionary movement corresponding to that supreme rising of the Paris proletariat did not arise in all centres, in Berlin, Madrid, and elsewhere. "As far as I am concerned, I shall continue my effort, and shall work steadily to establish for the future this fruitful solidarity among all working people. I am not withdrawing from the International at all, and the rest of my life will be devoted, as have been my past efforts, to the triumph of the social ideas which some day - you may rest assured of it - will lead to the world-wide victory of the proletariat." As a historical note, a volume entitled "The First International, Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872 with Related Documents", continued the report on Marx's Speech, and included more on peaceful evolution (originally published in the "Algemeen Handelsblad", edited and translated by Hans Gerth, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1958, pp. 236-7): "The general juxtaposition of peaceful means in some cases and violent revolution in the others, hence of "reform" and "revolution," is confirmed by the Algemeen Handelsblad. ""The speaker [i.e., Marx] defends the use of violence, where other means do not help. In North America the barricades are unnecessary, because there, if they but want it, the proletariat can win victory through the polls. The same applies to England and some other countries where the working classes have the right to free speech. But in the great majority of states revolution has to be substituted for legality, because otherwise - by a mistaken sense of generosity, by a wrong-headed sense of justice - one will not attain one's ends. Strong, vigorous propaganda will have to prepare and support the revolution. For these reasons too a great centralization of power in the hands of the General Council is urgently needed."" In his "Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891", Engels wrote about the possibility of peaceful evolution in republics (MESW III, pp. 434-5): "One can conceive that the old society may develop peacefully into the new one in countries where the representatives of the people concentrate all power in their hands, where, if one has the support of the majority of the people, one can do as one sees fit in a constitutional way: in democratic republics such as France and the USA, in monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily and where this dynasty is powerless against the people. But in Germany where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power, to advocate such a thing in Germany, when, moreover, there is no need to do so, means removing the fig-leaf from absolutism and becoming oneself a screen for its nakedness. ... "But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy, peaceful way." Engels knew that taking away the property of the rich would not be a day at the beach, and left no doubt that democratic republics were to facilitate peaceful change. Engels' statement also tried to correct those in his German party who suggested that 'peaceful evolution was possible in Germany', even under their existing undemocratic regime. Of interest as well was the observation of: ..."monarchies such as Britain, where the imminent abdication of the dynasty in return for financial compensation is discussed in the press daily"... This statement parallels Marx's civil solution of 'workers getting off easiest by buying out the capitalist class'. But, nowadays, the whole question of seeking social justice by mucking about with property in any way, shape, or form, has been settled as a non-productive waste of time. Lenin addressed the argument about 'peaceful vs. violent change in America' in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", in which he may have done his own revision of Marx and Engels (LCW 28, pp. 238, 241-2): "Further, was there in the seventies anything which made England and America exceptional in regard to what we are now discussing? It will be obvious to anyone at all familiar with the requirements of science in regard to the problems of history that this question must be put. To fail to put it is tantamount to falsifying science, to engaging in sophistry. And, the question having been put, there can be no doubt as to the reply: the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is violence against the bourgeoisie; and the necessity of such violence isparticularly called for, as Marx and Engels have repeatedly explained in detail (especially in The Civil War in France and in the preface to it), by the existence of militarism and a bureaucracy. But it is precisely these institutions that were non-existent in Britain and America in the seventies, when Marx made his observations (they do exist in Britain and Americanow)!" It is hard for me to believe that the differences in the military bureaucracies of the USA and Britain between the 1870's and World War One could have been as great as the night and daypicture that Lenin painted, which I found somewhat reminiscent of A.P.'s 'night and day difference between the economic conditions of the USA and Russia'. It was almost as though Lenin was willing to sacrifice a little too much of the truth in order to convince people of the necessity of violent revolutions in democracies. But, Lenin desperately needed the support of revolutions in the rest of the world in order for the Russian Revolution to succeed in a truly Marxist fashion, and 'attaining political supremacy in order to expropriate the property of the rich' was an essential ingredient of both Marxism and Leninism. Forcible expropriation was part of Marx and Engels' humanitarian plan to implement full participation in the economy, butexpropriation became obsolete as soon as Europe refused to assist the Russian Revolution by having long-lasting revolutions of its own. Today, the abolition of class distinctions could begin simply by gradually reducing labor time as made feasible by technological improvements. We have shared work by reducing hours of labor in our democracies before, and we will do the same again. That very same process will be the only feasible means of proceeding to a classless and stateless administration of things. None of the SLP literature that I read seemed to adequately deal with the question of bureaucratic-military apparatuses. What the police, National Guard, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, CIA, DIA, DEA, FBI, DISC, and other bureaucracies of state would do if a workers' party won a ballot box victory was just not dealt with by the SLP, unless the Party's nearly total disregard of the subject were to be regarded as the leadership's way of dealing with it. A.P. continued his chapter on 'peaceful revolution' (p. 61): "And in the preface to the first English translation of "Capital," Engels said: ""The sighed-for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, 'what to do with the unemployed'; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed, losing patience, will take their own fate into their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man [Karl Marx] whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion, that, at least in Europe, England [and, by parity of reasoning, the United States] is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a 'pro-slavery rebellion,' to this peaceful and legal revolution." "That "pro-slavery rebellion" will, if attempted, in this country be met with the superior force of the proletariat, organized into invincible, integral Industrial Unions." Amazingly enough, the Preface in my edition of "Capital" agrees word for word with the above, with the exception of A.P.'s bracketed additions, and a couple of extra commas that made no substantive difference. In an SLP pamphlet, no quotation from Marx or Engels would be complete without being 'updated' to correspond to 'American conditions'. Even though Engels didn't mention the United States in his 1886 Preface to Capital, for reasons that become obvious by a perusal of his correspondence in Appendix 1, A.P. felt compelled to scream back into history, "Don't forget us! The USA is as eligible for revolution as England!" But, were American workers in 1886 anywhere near to the point of making revolution? Engels instead portrayed the USA as a country with a vast number of independent peasants, the most bourgeois country on earth, and in 1886, so many people could still come from across the sea and set themselves up in business, or on their own farms. Workers in general rejected the SLP, which Engels described as 'a party in name only, a mere branch of the German party, where the last of the louts had been consigned', but workers were attracted en masse to Henry George's United Labor Party, perhaps because of its 'single tax' panacea.Parting Shots Arnold Petersen wound up his "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism" pamphlet with (pp. 62-3):p. 62:"Conclusion. "In passing I should like to add that on this question Lenin parts company with Marx, Engels and De Leon. {1} He does so for reasons which to me seem irrational, or which certainly do not seem based on facts or logic. {2} To go into that, however, would require more time than we have this afternoon. {3} I mention the point chiefly because I desire to avoid laying myself open to the charge of evasion, or, by implication, of misrepresenting Lenin on this question. {4} It would require a separate lecture to deal fully with the questions of physical force and violence in relation to the labor movement and the revolutionary act. The revolutionist, however, should never feel impelled to apologize for insisting on the possibility of a peaceful solution, provided he does not neglect the organizing of the needed force, the Industrial Union. {5} Brute physical force is the law of the jungle. But civilized man differs from the denizens of the jungle because of his superior intelligence, his power to reason, and, above all, his capacity to organize for a common purpose. {6} The veneer that separates man from the beast may, in a sense, be thin enough, but such as it is, it is the one saving grace, the one thing that inspires hope of our ever rising superior even to the present capitalist jungle. Dear to the heart of civilized man is the hope of settling social disputes peacefully, and, as De Leon said, it is the one consummation dearly pursued by the Socialist. {7} We of the working class want peace. We are tired and weary of the struggle of the ages. We want to put an end to capitalism with as little trouble as possible, though with all the power necessary. {8} And we are a thousand times fortunate in that destiny, or whatever we may call it, furnished us, not only with this magnificent country with its enormous resources and its high degree of political and economic development, {9} but also with the great social scientist whose genius enables us to chart our course and inspires us with the determination expressed in the poem recited by our young comrade this afternoon - "Sail on, Sail on, and on, and on" - for the successful entry into the port of humanity, the haven of the Socialist Commonwealth of free, enlightened and affluent labor.""(The End .)" It certainly was good to have finally reached 'The end' of A.P.'s anarchist tract, but his concluding paragraphs raised a few more issues:1 ... 'on this question Lenin parts company with Marx, Engels and De Leon.' For A.P., 'this question' seems to have been that of 'overcoming the 'pro-slavery rebellion' of the capitalist class in a peaceful way', and, for A.P., 'The only peaceful way will be toorganize labor into Industrial Unions, thus ensuring the economic force necessary to back up the mandate at the ballot box.' In opposition to a 'peaceful revolution', Engels wrote aboutviolent revolution in a draft of a letter to Gerson Trier in December of 1889 (MESC, p. 386): ... "We are agreed on this: that the proletariat cannot conquer political power, the only door to the new society, without violent revolution. For the proletariat to be strong enough to win on the decisive day it must - and Marx and I have advocated this ever since 1847 - form a separate party distinct from all others and opposed to them, a conscious class party." ... In a democracy, a workers' party could theoretically come to power by merely winning an election, but its electoral success also depends on its program. The bad old days of workers' parties including expropriation of the upper classes are over with, for such programs lost all popularity when the vast majority came to respect and want property for themselves, so can't imagine arbitrarily taking it away from anyone else. If expropriation were to become a popular demand (simply as an exercise in speculation), then lower class political supremacy would be achievable only through violence, but few in this country would ever vote for a party with such a program. If the lower classes in democracies can become sensible and powerful enough to demand and get reduced labor-time, violence is completely avoidable, and the abolition of class distinctions achieved after a complete abolition of wage-labor and the wages system.2 'Lenin parts company with Marx, Engels and De Leon ... for reasons which to me seem irrational, or which certainly do not seem based on facts or logic.' Now A.P. seems to have questioned Lenin's sanity! But, he thereby wielded a double-edged sword: The advisability of trotting out a maniac to sing De Leon's praises is questionable. Perhaps A.P. was hoping no one would notice. If A.P. could not bring truth and sound logic into play against his ideological enemies, then he must have hoped that slander would destroy them. Marx, Engels and Lenin were of like minds in consistently rejecting anarcho-syndicalist and utopian restructurings of society along economic lines, and they were of like minds in recognizing that the lower classes will never be able to accomplish what they want without a party that represents their class interests, one of which interests, in this day and age, is 'full participation in the economy', as the robots march in to replace all human labor. A.P. and De Leon were out of line with the other three.3 "To go into that, however, would require more time than we have this afternoon." What a cop-out! A.P. avoided backing up his slanderous allegations, and this wasn't his only instance of attacking and running away.4 "I mention the point chiefly because I desire to avoid laying myself open to the charge of evasion, or, by implication, of misrepresenting Lenin on this question." We would never charge A.P. with misrepresenting Lenin, would we? Oh no, not us, and not much. First, A.P. alleged that Lenin might have been irrational, illogical, or lying, and then he claimed not to have the time to prove those charges. Then he 'mentioned the point chiefly to avoid laying himself open to the charge of evasion or of having misrepresented Lenin on the question of a peaceful revolution', as if the mere mentioning that he didn't have time to back up his charges might somehow relieve him from charges of slander. I would also like to know why it was that, at the beginning of A.P.'s pamphlet, Lenin was trotted out to sing the praises of Socialist Industrial Unionism, but now we find that 'Lenin opposed Marx, Engels and De Leon on the question of a peaceful solution.' Favoring the SIU, on the one hand, and then supposedly opposing Marx, Engels, and De Leon on the question of peaceful revolution, on the other hand, is quite contradictory, so it lends less credibility than ever to the SLP's many claims of Lenin's alleged attraction to De Leon and his SIU.5 "The revolutionist, however, should never feel impelled to apologize for insisting on the possibility of a peaceful solution, provided he does not neglect the organizing of the needed force, the Industrial Union." Is the converse true as well? What if the revolutionist does neglect the organizing of the Industrial Union? Should 'the revolutionist' then 'feel impelled to apologize for insisting on the possibility of a peaceful solution'? Either way, both the original hypothesis and its converse imply that 'the revolutionist' will probably insist 'on the possibility of a peaceful solution', whether or not the Industrial Union is organized, which lack of organization only determines whether the revolutionist should apologize for insisting on a peaceful solution. How fortunate for revolutionists to be permitted by A.P. to insist on a peaceful solution, in spite of not having organized the Industrial Union. Maybe that was a subtle and inadvertent admission that the Industrial Union is not as important as the democratic republic in determining the possibility of peaceful change. But, why should a revolutionist apologize for insisting on the possibility of a peaceful solution anyway, especially when revolutionists who know what the term 'revolution' means would not be caught dead insisting on peaceful solutions? It would be more compassionate for revolutionists to apologize for advocating violence, especially in a democracy. Engels believed that the change in America would be less violent than in a country like Russia, and, in his October 1893 letter to Danielson, he got very close to explaining why (MESC, pp. 437-8): ... "[T]he present capitalistic phase of development in Russia appears an unavoidable consequence of the historical conditions as created by the Crimean war {1853-6}, the way in which the change of 1861 in agrarian conditions was accomplished, and the political stagnation in Europe generally. Where he {Struve} is decidedly wrong, is in comparing the present state of Russia with that of the United States, in order to refute what he calls your pessimistic views of the future. He says, the evil consequences of modern capitalism in Russia will be as easily overcome as they are in the United States. There he quite forgets that the U.S. are modern, bourgeois, from the very origin; that they were founded by petits bourgeois and peasants who ran away from European feudalism in order to establish a purely bourgeois society. Whereas in Russia, we have a groundwork of a primitive communistic character, a pre-civilisationGentilgesellschaft [Gentile society], crumbling ruins, it is true, but still serving as the groundwork, the material upon which the capitalistic revolution (for it is a real social revolution) acts and operates. In America, Geldwirtschaft [Money economy] has been fully established for more than a century, in Russia, Naturalwirtschaft [Natural economy] was all but exclusively the rule. Therefore it stands to reason that the change, in Russia, must be far more violent, far more incisive, and accompanied by immensely greater sufferings than it can be in America. "But for all that it still seems to me that you take a gloomier view of the case than the facts justify. No doubt, the passage from primitive agrarian communism to capitalistic industrialism cannot take place without terrible dislocation of society, without the disappearance of whole classes and their transformation into other classes; and what enormous suffering, and waste of human lives and productive forces that necessarily implies, we have seen - on a smaller scale - in Western Europe. But from that to the complete ruin of a great and highly gifted nation there is still a long way. The rapid increase of population to which you have been accustomed, may be checked; the reckless deforestation combined with the expropriation of the old[Landlords] as well as the peasants may cause a colossal waste of productive forces; but after all, a population of more than a hundred million will finally furnish a very considerable home market for a very respectable grande industrie, and with you as elsewhere, things will end by finding their own level - if capitalism lasts long enough in Western Europe." Which, of course, it has. It seems as though the SLP's belief in a smoother transition to socialism in America than in Russia was not unfounded in socialist sentiment.6 "Brute physical force is the law of the jungle. But civilized man differs from the denizens of the jungle because of his superior intelligence, his power to reason, and, above all, his capacity to organize for a common purpose." By ignoring the daily violence of our allegedly civilized society, A.P. gave civilization far too much credit. We have lots of problems to solve, and the alleged 'superior intelligence' of 'civilized man' has yet to be turned toward a commitment to peacefully abolishing class distinctions.7 ... 'settling social disputes peacefully ... is the one consummation dearly pursued by the Socialist.' A.P.'s formulation looks approximately like the 'peaceful worship of legality at any price' that Engels criticized in his April 1895 letter to Kautsky. If peace were truly dear to A.P., he wouldn't have used so many fighting words in his pamphlet.8 'We of the working class want peace. We are tired and weary of the struggle of the ages. We want to put an end to capitalism with as little trouble as possible, though with all the power necessary.' 'With all the economic power necessary, that is, and certainly not with the power of the state', A.P. should have added, to be consistent with the rest of his pamphlet. The same way that the anarchists would abolish the state out of hand, so do they also wish to 'put an end to capitalism' with nothing to take its place, except for that magic 'administration of things'.9 ... 'this magnificent country with its enormous resources, and its high degree of political and economic development' ... A great way for A.P. to end his pamphlet, by paralyzing his readers with pride for their country. If its political development is so great, then why should workers abolish the state? Such a mixed message. Overall, A.P.'s pamphlet was very garbled and confused, fit only for a small sect of true believers with few hopes, and with far fewer chances of influencing anyone.(End Part E. Continued in Part F.)(Part F)PART FIVE: CONCLUDING REMARKSEarly Roots of Anarchism The founders of socialism had much to say about anarchism, and some of their writings about the ideology upon which the SLP is based are included here. In a May 10, 1890 letter to Laura Lafargue, Engels criticized the general strike (ELC II, p. 376): ... "Paul spoke very well - a slight indication of the universal strike dream in it, which nonsense Guesde has retained from his anarchist days - (whenever we are in a position to try the universal strike, we shall be able to get what we want for the mere asking for it, without the roundabout way of the universal strike)." ... In a 17 June 1879 letter to Bernstein, Engels was even more precise: "So one can speak of a workers' movement here only to the extent that strikes take place which, victorious or otherwise, do not advance the movement by one single step." In January of 1873, Marx satirized anarchist thinking in a short article entitled "Indifference to Politics". If the anarchists had been sincere, according to Marx, they would probably have expressed themselves in the following manner (NW 153, pp. 95-6): ""If the political struggle of the working class assumes violent forms, if the workers substitute their revolutionary dictatorship for the dictatorship of the bourgeois class, they are committing the terrible crime of lese-principle {crime against principle}, for to satisfy their own base everyday needs and crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, instead of laying down arms and abolishing the State they are giving it a revolutionary and transient form. The workers should not form individual unions for each trade, since they thereby perpetuate the division of social labour found in bourgeois society. This division which disunites the workers is really the basis of their present servitude. ""In a word, the workers should fold their arms and not waste their time in political and economic movements. These movements can only bring them immediate results. Like truly religious people, scornful of everyday needs, they should cry, full of faith: 'May our class be crucified, may our race perish, but may the eternal principles remain unstained!' They should, like pious Christians, believe in the words of the priest, despise earthly blessings and think only of earning Paradise. For Paradise read THE ABOLITION OF SOCIETY, which will one day arrive in some small corner of the world, no one knows how or by whose efforts, and the mystification will be exactly the same. ""Until this famous abolition of society arrives, the working class must behave decently, like a flock of well-fed sheep, leave the government in peace, fear the police, respect the laws, and provide cannon fodder without complaining. ""In practical everyday life the workers must be most obedient servants of the State, but inside themselves they must protest energetically against its existence, and show their profound theoretical disdain for it by purchasing and reading literary treatises on the abolition of the State. They must moreover take good care not to offer any resistance to the capitalist order apart from holding forth on the society of the future in which the odious order will have ceased to exist!" "No one would deny that if the apostles of indifference to politics were to express themselves in such a clear manner, the working class would soon tell them where to go and would feel highly offended by these bourgeois doctrinaires and displaced gentlefolk who are stupid or naive enough to forbid them every real method of struggle because all the arms to fight with must be taken from existing society, and because the inevitable conditions of this struggle do not unfortunately fit in with the idealist fantasies that these doctors of social science have deified under the name of Liberty, Autonomy and Anarchy." Some of that obviously could have been written about the modern SLP and its anarchist-utopian program. In a letter to Sorge in October of 1891, Engels remarked about the concealed anarchists recruiting among attendees at the Erfurt Congress of the German Social-Democratic Labor Party (LTA, p. 237): "Everything went off very well in Erfurt. I shall send you the official minutes as soon as they are published. Bebel says the speeches were badly garbled in the news reports. Instead of making accusations, the opposition of the presumptuous Berliners was at once placed in the prisoner's dock itself. They behaved with miserable cowardice, and now they must work outside the party if they want to accomplish anything. Quite beyond doubt there are police elements among them, and another section consists of concealed anarchists, who want to do secret recruiting among our people. The rest of them are jackasses: bumptious students, unsuccessful candidates, and would-be great men of all sorts. All in all, less than two hundred strong. . . . We have the satisfaction of seeing the Marxian critique win all along the line. Even the last trace of Lassalleanism has been removed." ... In a March, 1894 letter to Pablo Iglesias in Madrid, Engels again pointed out the close connections between anarchists, police, and bourgeoisie (MEW 39, p. 229): ... "With regard to the anarchists, they are probably in the process of committing suicide. These violent attacks, this series of attacks which are senseless, and, when all is said and done, are paid for and provoked by the police, must finally open the eyes of the bourgeois to the true character of this propaganda of fools and police spies. Even the bourgeoisie will find in time that it is absurd to pay the police, and through the police the anarchists, so that the anarchists can blow up those same bourgeois who pay them. And even if we now risk suffering under a bourgeois reaction, in the long run we will win, because this time we can show to everyone that between us and the anarchists there is a chasm." ...Autonomy In an 1873 article entitled "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International", Marx, Engels, and Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) wrote about Bakunin's desire to make the local organizations, or "Sections" of the International Workingmen's Association, autonomous (NW 153, pp. 119-21): "This same man {Bakunin} who in 1870 preaches to the Russians passive, blind obedience to orders coming from above and from an anonymous committee; who declares that jesuitical discipline is the sine qua non of victory, the only thing capable of defeating the formidable centralisation of the State - not just the Russian State but any State; who proclaims a communism more authoritarian than the most primitive communism - this same man, in 1871, weaves a separatist and disorganising movement into the fabric of the International under the pretext of combating the authoritarianism and centralisation of the German Communists, of introducing autonomy of the sections, a free federation of autonomous groups, and of making the International what it should be: the image of future society. ... "While granting the fullest freedom to the movements and aspirations of the working class in various countries, the International had nevertheless succeeded in uniting it into a single whole and making the ruling classes and their governments feel for the first time the cosmopolitan power of the proletariat. The ruling classes and the governments recognised this fact by concentrating their attacks on the executive body of our whole organisation, the General Council. These attacks became increasingly intense after the fall of the Commune. And this was the moment that the Alliancists chose to declare open war on the General Council themselves! They claimed that its influence, a powerful weapon in the hands of the International, was but a weapon directed against the International itself. According to them, the General Council's domineering tendencies had prevailed over the autonomy of the sections and the national federations. The only way of saving autonomy was to decapitate the International. "Indeed the men of the Alliance realised that if they did not seize this decisive moment, it would be all up with their plans for the secret direction of the proletarian movement of which Bakunin's hundred international brothers had dreamed. Their invective wakened approving echoes in the police press of all countries. "Their resounding phrases about autonomy and free federation, in a word, war-cries against the General Council, were thus nothing but a manoeuvre to conceal their true purpose - to disorganise the International and by doing so subordinate it to the secret, hierarchic and autocratic rule of the Alliance. "Autonomy of the sections, free federation of the autonomous groups, anti-authoritarianism, anarchy - these were convenient phrases for a society of the "declassed", of "down-and-outs" "with no career or prospects", conspiring within the International to subject it to a secret dictatorship and impose upon it the programme of M. Bakunin! " The Party's inspiration for the autonomy of its sections seems to have come straight from Bakunin's ideas for the autonomy of the sections of the First International. After the anarchists took over the Party in 1889, the Workmen's Advocate printed the NEC's comment that "The constitution grants the sections full autonomy." (See Appendix 2.)Marx and Engels on Sectarianism In some of his letters to Americans, Engels complained about SLP sectarianism. Marx wrote philosophically about sectarianism in a November 1871 letter to Friedrich Bolte in New York, which also included a short history and statement of purpose of the First International (MESC, pp. 253-4): ... "The International was founded in order to replace the socialist or semi-socialist sects by a really militant organisation of the working class. The original Rules and the Inaugural Address show this at a glance. On the other hand the International could not have stood its ground if the course of history had not already smashed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real working class movement always stand in inverse proportion to each other. Sects are (historically) justified so long as the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historical movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. But the features displayed by history everywhere are repeated in the history of the International. Antiquated aspects attempt to re-establish and to assert themselves within the newly acquired form. "And the history of the International was a continual struggle of the General Council against the sects and amateur experiments, which sought to assert themselves within the International against the real movement of the working class. This struggle was conducted at the Congresses, but to a far greater extent in private negotiations between the General Council and individual sections. "Since in Paris, the Proudhonists (Mutualists) were co-founders of the Association, they naturally held the reins there for the first few years. Later, of course, collectivist, positivist, etc., groups arose there in opposition to them. "In Germany, the Lassalle clique. I myself corresponded with the notorious Schweitzer for two years and proved to him irrefutably that Lassalle's organisation was a mere sectarian organisation and, as such, hostile to the organisation of the real workers' movement propagated by the International. He had his "reasons" for not understanding. "At the end of 1868 the Russian Bakunin joined the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International called "Alliance de la Democratie Socialiste", with himself as leader. He - a man devoid of all theoretical knowledge - claimed to represent the scientific propaganda of the International in that separate body, and wanted to make such propaganda the special function of that second International within the International. "His programme was a hash superficially scraped together from the Right and from the Left - equality of classes(!), abolition of the right of inheritance as the starting point of the social movement (St. Simonist nonsense), atheism as a dogma dictated to the members, etc., and as the main dogma (Proudhonist): abstention from political action. "This puerile myth found favour (and still has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain, where the material conditions for the workers' movement are as yet little developed, and among a few vain, ambitious, and empty doctrinaires in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and in Belgium. "To Mr. Bakunin his doctrine (the rubbish he borrowed from Proudhon, St. Simon, and others) was and is a secondary matter - merely a means to his personal self-assertion. Though a non-entity as a theoretician he is in his element as an intriguer." Has history come around once again to smash sectarianism? Marx and Engels also advised against sectarianism in their 1848 "Communist Manifesto" (MESW I, pp. 119-20): "The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."II"PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS "In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? "The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. "They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. "They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. "The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole." To "shape and mould the proletarian movement" is precisely what the SLP has tried to do through its SIU program, adherence to which is a condition of Party membership. To create a sect that would be dedicated to a utopian program, and could be relied upon to not cooperate with other parties, and to not rally behind workers' interests, would meet bourgeois goals rather nicely. In a letter to Schweitzer in October 1868, Marx wrote more about sectarianism (MESC, p. 201): "He {Lassalle} overlooked the fact that conditions in Germany and England were different. He overlooked the lessons of the bas empire {Second Empire} with regard to universal suffrage in France. Moreover, like everyone who maintains that he has a panacea for the sufferings of the masses in his pocket, he gave his agitation from the outset a religious and sectarian character. Every sect is in fact religious. Furthermore, just because he was the founder of a sect, he denied all natural connection with the earlier working class movement both inside Germany and abroad. He fell into the same mistake as Proudhon: instead of looking among the genuine elements of the class movement for the real basis of his agitation, he wanted to prescribe the course to be followed by this movement according to a certain doctrinaire recipe. "Most of what I am now saying, post factum, I had already told Lassalle in 1862, when he came to London and urged me to place myself with him at the head of the new movement. "You yourself have personally experienced the contradiction between the movement of a sect and the movement of a class. The sect sees its raison d'être {reason for being} and its point of honor not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from the movement." And, what is the 'particular shibboleth' of the SLP but its own SIU program? A great deal of information in Marx's letter still pertains to the SLP. In the "Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism" chapter toward the end of the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (MESW I, pp. 134-6), additional passages closely descriptive of the SLP can be recognized.Anarchist World Outlook According to the SLP, 'Socialism = Communism = classless and stateless society, technologically advanced countries allegedly requiring no political transition period to reach. Since all modern countries have state apparatuses, that proves that no country enjoys socialism.' 'A workers' state is inconceivable, so every state is a capitalist state, even those that pretend to be socialist. Hence, in the presence of all of these capitalist states, there is no socialism anywhere.' 'The predominant form of production and exchange in the technologically advanced countries corresponds to capitalism, and the class struggle between wage-workers and unemployed versus the capitalist class will someday lead to revolution.' 'Since the socialist revolution will happen first in the advanced countries, then the struggles that go on in the colonies cannot possibly be socialist in nature, because socialism follows capitalism, not feudalism or colonialism. Whatever happens in the colonies cannot affect prospects for revolution in advanced countries. Therefore, anything occurring in the colonies is irrelevant to the interests of the workers in the advanced capitalist countries.' Having defined 'scientific socialism' and 'scientific communism' to be one and the same thing, i.e., classless and stateless society, SLP leaders concluded that 'Socialism or communism in the alleged socialist countries cannot possibly exist, since obviously the state and classes still exist in those countries, and the level of economic development there corresponds only to a low level of capitalism, or even to feudalism. Only the American economy and few others can support socialism, so the claims of some states as having had socialist revolutions are incorrect or fraudulent, so therefore are not worth supporting in the least.' 'There is no reason for oppressed workers in the colonies to fight for national independence or take state power, because, by doing so (i.e., by using the capitalist state), they will only end up being exploited by their own national bourgeoisie and will thus get absolutely nowhere. The only hope for the oppressed people in the colonies is to wait for American workers to have their SIU revolution first, who will then provide the colonies with machinery to modernize their primitive tools of production. Then the workers in the colonies can organize their own Industrial Unions and liberate themselves at their own pace.' 'Whatever the workers in the colonies do, they should not resist their oppressors, due to the inevitable failure of such efforts. Rather than try and fail, it is far better not to try at all, and thus not fail.' 'Three superpowers - America, China, and Russia - were battling each other for hegemony over Vietnam, allowing the Vietnamese no chances whatsoever to win a struggle against the combined might of all three. Because of their low state of economic development, it didn't matter who won, or if the superpowers simply pulled out and went home, because the Vietnamese would only go on being exploited by one of the superpowers or by their own national bourgeoisie as oppressively as ever. Since it didn't matter which ruling class won, all American aid, assistance and demonstrations against the war were a total waste of time, for, what with the comparatively low level of economic development, the Vietnamese were automatically condemned to suffer the fate of class division, the state, and capitalist exploitation.' Such was the sentence of slavery that the SLP handed down to the Vietnamese, 'an irrevocable enslavement to their capitalist, feudal or imperialist ruling classes until some day their productive forces evolve to the point where they can organize themselves into Socialist Industrial Unions, and leap into the classless and stateless administration of things.' By redefining socialism to mean ONLY classless and stateless society, and by asserting that 'the USA has the necessary level of technology to leap into classless and stateless society', they were then able to falsely conclude that: 'Socialism was possible for the USA, but not for Russia.' 'If the Soviet state owned and controlled the means of production in the old Soviet Union, and if all state ownership can only be capitalist state ownership; then Russia's Communist Party must have comprised a new capitalist class.' A corollary of this perspective is: 'The party of the proletariat, upon coming to power, turns its back on the proletariat and becomes its new oppressor. That is why De Leon warned of the menace of a mere political victory of the working class party. Without the SIU having been organized to step in and lock out the capitalists and establish the Industrial Union administration of production when the state and parties are abolished, the capitalist state would continue to oppress workers.' Additionally, 'If any country has an alleged socialist revolution, it must immediately abolish its state in order to prove that it has indeed had a true socialist revolution.' 'There were two theories of revolution: an economic theory for advanced countries, to come true in the future, and a bad, political scenario that materialized in the past. In other words 1): A Marxist-De Leonist theory of revolution in technologically advanced countries - economic rather than political' - and, 2): 'An obsolete Marxist theory for individual backward countries, political rather than economic, complete with transition periods, dictatorships of the proletariat over the middle classes, and oppressive state apparatuses.' 'Technologically advanced countries should not follow the Marxist model of revolution for underdeveloped countries.' 'Because of advances in the tool of production, political solutions are no longer necessary in technologically advanced countries. The form into which workers should organize so as to avoid using the state or any kind of political solution was discovered by De Leon. Political solutions yesterday, classless and stateless Industrialism today. The Marxist theory of the state was as good as what could have been gotten in the bad old days of underdevelopment, but nowadays the form into which we can organize ourselves to put aside antique political solutions to modern problems has at last been discovered by De Leon. All we have to do is organize into Socialist Industrial Unions, dismantle the state when the Party is elected, and proceed to classless and stateless paradise.' In an attempt to antidote the kind of 'economic determinist' label that the foregoing analysis might conjure up, members were encouraged to read Engels' letter to J. Bloch of September 1890, in which historical materialism was somewhat differentiated from economic determinism. It was hoped that the mere reading of that letter would be sufficient to make members aware of the issue, and, by so doing, would enable members to better deny the charge of them being economic determinists.SLP Membership My old SLP membership application blank asked, "Do you realize that all the other political parties, and factions thereof, are necessarily the instruments of capitalist interests?" In order to agree to such a statement, new members must either be somewhat naive, with no previous political experience, or anxious to belong to something, or maybe anything, and/or willing to lie to join it. One or more of the above must have been my own reason for signing, as I had to have compromised my principles when I agreed to that statement with no personal knowledge of its veracity. If any of the members who inducted me had pinned me down to find out if I truly agreed with that statement, the truth might have come out that I really had no personal knowledge; but since a 'yes' seemed to have been what the Party had wanted applicants to respond with, I must have written 'yes' precisely so that I could become a member. The SLP could not have survived with its present program for so long unless the membership was very weak in theoretical matters. For a relatively small fee, members have had the satisfaction of belonging to a revolutionary organization. They are entitled by membership to know things that outsiders will perhaps never know. While I was in the Party, what we were entitled to know was little more exciting than: 1) our laziness would be frowned upon by the Party hierarchy if we didn't participate in their marketing plans to distribute ever more leaflets, literature and bring in new members; 2) feeble explanations of why the Party was on a gradual decline; 3) well after something real had happened in the Party, and was over and done with, we may have been entitled to read a one-sided report about it in a letter to the membership, an NEC Report, or a Convention Report. There are many in the field who pay their dues, distribute leaflets, attend Section meetings and functions, and would generally like things to go smoothly in the Party. They neither make trouble, look for trouble, nor do they want to have anything to do with trouble. Some of these members have even worked at the National Office. With this portion of the membership, I have little quarrel, except that they probably have maintained a poor understanding of social theory and should therefore take the time to bone up on it before committing to a program for change, for fear of their ideas being too far out of touch with reality to do anyone any good. Many members are very protective of the Party, and think that 'forces are bent on the destruction of the only hope for humanity'. To any sign of those destructive forces, as indicated to them by their instincts, or by the National Office, they give a wide berth. They continue to maintain the illusion that 'A conspiracy of silence and calumniation has been directed against the Party program for change to ensure that it will never be heard by the majority, who will be saved by it. Without knowledge of the Party program, workers will probably make the mistake of seeking political solutions to the social ills that plague us, and will thus be condemned to suffer under the eternal oppression of the state.' Some members may find it easy to think that they are the last of a dying breed of 'true socialists' who are keeping the torch lit for a time in the future when workers are expected to finally accept the teachings of the SLP, at which time their educational and organizational mission would begin in earnest; but, in the meantime, they carry on with the leafletting, picnics, banquets and Section meetings. They continue to follow all of the rules of the Party and keep internal matters a big secret. They fail to understand that the secrecy has been designed to prevent the kind of communication that has the potential to break the stranglehold of ignorance in their ranks. Members were supposed to be united by their mutual desire to change society, but the bureaucratic Party structure and the SIU program could never appeal to very many. To have spent so much energy taking quotes out of context and redefining basic concepts such as proletarian dictatorship implies nothing less than an intent to justify a worthless program. The rubbish created by falsifiers has been knowingly perpetuated by bureaucratic scoundrels, and in many cases unwittingly adopted by rank-and-file members who are deficient in theory. When A.P. falsified the meaning of anarchism by accusing it of wanting to abolish the state with nothing to take its place, I wonder if any members protested the fact that this was not really the program of anarchism, for what the anarchists really wanted was to replace the state with an administration of things, very much like the SIU. Or were they so apathetic that they didn't care what kind of false philosophy A.P. attached to anarchism? On the other hand, how extensive was the philosophical anarchist element in the Party who didn't care much about Marxism, but instead were so happy with the SIU program that they didn't care if it was supported by lies? If this philosophical anarchist element did exist, were they afraid to admit that they were anarchists? Did they draw new members into the Party with full knowledge that it had an anarchist program? Did they knowingly lie if they described the program of the Party as being 'socialist'? Upon some members becoming informed of the true state of affairs, a natural reaction for some may be to become mute, as though nothing happened. To admit to having been deceived, or to have been unconscious enough to have allowed themselves to have been fooled would be inconceivable, too large an insult to their egos, and too much of an undesirable dose of consciousness to allow themselves to consider. In order to be of use to society, some think that they must be infallible, and ready for whatever the revolution might bring. After all, they have been telling themselves for so long that they were the only hope for mankind, and that 'the working class will eventually look to them for the guidance that only they will be able to provide in a revolutionary crisis'. To doubt their roles on a fundamental level would be an admission of weakness that a revolutionary could never admit to. There may be others who will be thrown into a state of denial over having been used by liars to help them distribute lies. Will their paralysis forever prevent them from co-operating to throw out the lies? During the few years I stayed with the Party, and as frustrating was the scenario that unfolded before me, I stuck with the situation for as long as I could because I had a certain amount of faith that most members were basically honest workers and progressives who were attracted to the Party for one reason or another, but who never really studied Marxism deeply enough. They merely accepted a plausible Party line about the nature of socialism and revolution that happened to sound 'just right' to a constituency that has had a little time to 'dabble' in revolution, but not enough time nor interest to actually compare revolutionary theories. Having reread the letters that were sent to me by the handful of members I regularly corresponded with, I can easily vouch for the basic honesty of that segment of the membership. There is no question that at least the members I corresponded with had no intention of paralyzing or sabotaging progressive movements. Neither were they at the center of Party activities, cynically doing the intellectual work, keeping the People publication going, while knowing that what the Party stood for was but a miserable caricature of socialism. Rather, they were in the rank-and-file, doing the marketing, taking pride in belonging to what they honestly believed to be an organization that had something positive to offer to the lower classes, many times worrying about the decline of the Party, sometimes grumbling about the monotony of the work, most of the time willing to discuss problems that arose, and many times coming up with innovative ideas. The concentration of power into the hands of the National Office enabled a division of labor between the intellectuals and the rank and file members. In the Party's intellectual hierarchy, the NO exercised a practical monopoly control over questions of revolutionary theory, while the membership had insufficient understanding of, dialog about, or control over, the theories and methods that the NO preached, ordained, or upheld to be suitable for the membership to endlessly practice. After undertaking this analysis of the SLP program and ideology, how could I have had faith that the Party that I belonged to could come to an understanding of its role and regroup behind a higher principle? How could I have maintained a faith that the Party's followers were basically honest progressive people who could pick up the pieces and put them together in a far more coherent pattern than before? My own experience told me that there were honest progressives in the Party who had little to lose by helping the Party to correct its mistakes, and that it was worth my while to stick with them to see if I could get the word to them. What choice did I have if other parties had problems of their own that were just as bad as those of the SLP? I wasn't about to attach myself to a different party, what with the possibility that I would get just as disappointed in the new one as I did with the old one. I mention this in some detail due to the fact that, because I became critical of Party ideology while still in it, I was then accused of having collaborated or joined some other party for the purpose of de-stabilizing the SLP. My accusers charged me with being some kind of saboteur or spy in order to salvage what might have been left of their own self-respect. They had no yardstick of their own with which to determine the point at which the Party's own filthy lies and sordid record of falsifications could produce members like myself who would educate themselves and try to point out the lies to the rest of the members.The Moral Pits What qualifies the Party as one of bourgeois interests is that its leadership butchered many aspects of radical thought and history that could help improve the development of consciousness in the lower classes, and it prevented civilized discussion within the Party on those very subjects. In my experience, my associates at the NO didn't have a single good excuse for blocking the discussion of the Party's outrageous lies. Their adherence to the policy of silencing dissent within their ranks - instead of breaking with that policy - indicated an interest in preserving the dominance of their own muddled ideological line, and of their own dominance in general. Instead of joining in the struggle to find a feasible program of social change, they did little more than perpetuate the fraud and worthlessness of the anarcho-syndicalist SIU, a program that they had to support publicly, but, in less public circumstances, were sufficiently critical of to suggest changing into an 'organ of state power'. I had no axe to grind about anarchism or any other kind of 'ism' when I got to know the SLP in 1972. It was socialism I was interested in, and the Party called itself 'Socialist', and not an Anarchist Labor Party. If it had wanted to be anarchist, it should have called itself anarchist, instead of lying about its ideology. Because of the vile and sneaky methods the anarchists used to gather the naive around their cause, they certainly also gave anarchism a bad name, if anarchism ever had a good name. Anarchists should have the right to espouse their philosophy as they see fit, but when they do so under the auspices of socialist ideology that they knowingly contradict, then they move out of the category of honest ideologues (if anarchists ever deserved that description) and into the category of willful deceivers. While thinking about my experiences, I sometimes became hyper-critical, as this old draft to a correspondent will show: 'If there was an element in the Party that was capable of being outraged, then they might have been outraged over the fact that the intellectuals of the NO knew that the Party program was based on lies, but they refused to take part in informing the membership, and here are two possible reasons: 1) they willingly joined the swindle, recognizing it as such and naturally had to keep it a secret, or 2) they weren't part of the swindle to begin with, but later became aware of it, and then realized that it was easy enough to milk it to their own benefit, and for that reason kept it a secret. 'The bureaucrats develop an arrogance and a haughtiness and would like to create an aura around themselves as if they alone had been appointed to carry on the De Leonist tradition. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy who come around to an understanding of the true state of affairs and who wish to communicate its sordidness to the rest of the membership will get to be treated as though they were just there to be exploited, or as though they barely exist. Because they don't have any power of their own, they might as well be condemned to stay in that condition forever. If they didn't have the smarts to join in with the scam and enjoy the corruption, they should be a slave until they do get the smarts. If unwilling to join the present scam, then, with any luck, they may get the smarts to discover some other scam they can run on some other suckers.' While paying lip service to democracy in the Party, the intellectuals think that they have the same right to determine its ideology that religious fanatics have to determine how a woman should control her body. Who but very sinister or cynical elements would try to get others to believe in what they themselves know to be nothing but a farce? I remember how naive I was when I first joined, and if it hadn't been for the same people whom I now criticize, but who urged me to study and educate myself, then it's anyone's guess as to how long I would have remained a pseudo-socialist myself, spreading lies without much enthusiasm. I remain appreciative of those who pointed out that I had a lot to learn, and I thank them for that, for I was definitely open to any kind of information that would have made a better student out of me, and I am still of that frame of mind.Insidious Influences After having gone through quite a bit of agony in the Party, I began associating what was happening with dialectical processes. I saw the Party's falsifications of Marxism and history as negations thereof, and it occurred to me that the Party had to start negating those negations if it wanted to evolve into something viable. In order to do this, channels of information would have to open up so that any sensitive subject could be openly discussed. The members must be very sick by now of the historical trend of the Party getting smaller and smaller, while the problems that surround workers continue to multiply. The technique has to be an old one. Falsify history and the views of the founders of socialism, and then make up a whole new philosophy, politics and solution to take the place of the original theories. Hand down fraud as immutable truth. Discourage study of anything other than Party-approved literature, and encourage distribution and marketing of Party propaganda. Maintain a bureaucratic organizational structure to ensure that only the designated fraud is disseminated, censor any attempts to spread the word if members discover it, and give them no alternative but to quit or be expelled if they don't like it. If there are reactionaries who want to keep workers at each other's throats, one way to keep them divided is to spread all kinds of invalid ideas and propaganda and let workers fight over the phony ideas forever after. With all of the resources at their disposal, they could create a new party every week, and with scarce opportunities to make the rich richer, they could have opportunists fighting for the pleasure of leading bands of deceived dogmatists for many a year. The first book by one of the famous defectors from the CIA reveals that this was precisely one of the tricks that was played in Latin America. They actually created parties with revolutionary sounding names that were used by the governments to disrupt, co-opt, and spy on other progressives.How the SLP Might Greet this Book From what Engels had indicated in January 1887 (see Appendix 1), the old SLP platform was worthy of his approval, but near the end of 1889, the anarchists toppled the socialists in a palace coup. In spite of initial optimism over getting rid of the Rosenberg clique, Engels didn't regard the results of the coup as much of an improvement. Were this book to be freely circulated among the membership, the following reactions are conceivable: Some members would welcome a lot of nagging questions being answered. Some might become inspired to further study Party history. Some would not be satisfied with anything less than the truth about the role of the SLP, and would not be so easily fooled in the future. Some might continue to look upon the SIU as the only hope for humanity and will continue to want to propagate it. Some might recognize that the SIU has little basis in Marxism and might want to stop misrepresenting it as having much in common with Marxism. Some might even want to change the Party's name to something more attuned to the anarchist element of their philosophy. Some might portray themselves as the true defenders of 'Marxism-De Leonism' and denounce all critics of their dogma as police agents bent on destroying the only hope for humanity. They might regard any criticism of their dogma as the greatest of blasphemy, and as anathema to their cause. They might want to do whatever they could to prevent other members from becoming more aware of problems and contradictions. Some who have been close to the scene of the ongoing crimes against consciousness may initially try to suppress knowledge of this book, but failing that, they may sniff the wind for a sense of direction, and, wishing to be on the winning side, may want to take the course of least resistance and drift with the consensus. Rather than wanting to get to the root of the problems, they might agree that 'perhaps a few internal problems existed ', and most likely would want to find a middle-of-the-road compromise, and then quickly extinguish any controversy that might embarrass them. If they had been in the Party bureaucracy, they could turn out to be quite antagonistic to efforts to raise consciousness. Some may display a willingness to compromise with previous positions by converting to a more 'Marxist' position, possibly by proposing to make state organizations out of the SIUs, or by supporting a shorter work-week, as though that could satisfy anyone who was outraged by the lies. Or, since they might not be above pretending to be outraged, they might suggest some inadequate means of dealing with the Party's dishonesty, or may instead want to fault the same old fall-guys, or otherwise fail to call for a full investigation, and quickly concern themselves with just getting back to a normal state of affairs. If there is a group of SLP intellectuals who find that it impossible to suppress knowledge of this book, but who disagree with many aspects of its criticisms, they may decide to apply their prodigious talents to nit-picking the book apart, seizing upon details they could dwell upon to try to discredit it. They may be quite willing to divert the Party's attention away from the main criticisms of the old leaders' falsifications of Marxism by not mentioning them at all, and instead engage in a biting criticism of its alleged flaws. They may want to search Party records to dig up matters of detail to prove that I was wrong or inaccurate on this or that point, and then concentrate Party consciousness on my errors to invalidate the rest of it. They would applaud the level of democracy already within the Party, but would insist upon editing any theoretical journal that the rank-and-file might propose in order to discuss theoretical matters. They might also want to claim that this book was nothing more than an exercise in the 'nit-picking-to-death' of Party literature. They might want to describe A.P.'s pamphlets as popularizations of Marxism that could never be faulted except for the difficulty entailed in compacting a tremendous amount of theoretical material in a small space in order to reach a greater market, and which could never approach the depth of analysis that a very long book could encompass. My criticisms of A.P. and De Leon might be denigrated as cowardly attacks upon dead people who can no longer defend themselves. Wishing that history was dead, they may very conveniently forget that Marx and Engels continued to criticize Lassalleanism far beyond Lassalle's death in 1864. Considering the weakness of the membership in theoretical affairs, and the willingness of some of them to want to keep on supporting the old dogma, the smoke screen that the intellectuals might be willing to put up just might be sufficient to drown out any support for the kinds of changes that this book suggests. Some might say that I have been too rough on the Party, that they mean well, but, because they are ignorant, they innocently bumble their way toward the revolution. The Party has such an innocuous program, so harmless to anyone, so, why treat them like criminals if they would never harm a flea? To this, I would say that a party is not a union, nor is it like any other less-political workers' organization. What a party is supposed to be doing at this stage of the struggle for influence in the state is raising consciousness, instead of lowering it. A union can be forgiven to a certain extent for making mistakes, but a Party leadership that willingly and knowingly lies about theory, or simply allows the lies to be perpetuated generation after generation, must be criticized without let-up, so that everyone becomes aware that the SLP, and other parties as well, pretend to speak for the interests of the lower classes, but are just looking for suckers who can be roped into supporting programs of folly, deceit and status quo, given the impossibility of doing anything about property.* * A reading of Marx "On America and the Civil War" shows that slavery remained an unresolved issue from the founding of the USA in the 1700's, and that the South attacked the North to try to retain slavery by dictatorship, for the South had become increasingly fearful that its diminishing pro-slavery majority in the Senate would soon be lost, and that slavery would be banned by law. Southerners were willing to smash the Union of States and fight to their death to preserve and extend as immoral a form of ownership as slavery, so people today would probably be willing to die ten times over to preserve all of the 'moral' forms of property ownership. While willing to ban slavery, the North was unwilling to impose dismantlement of the Southern plantations in order to provide the freed slaves with their promised 40 acres and a mule, even though the vanquished South could not have resisted such an imposition. Other opportunists would probably do exactly what the Party intellectuals continue to do, for what the Party has to offer may still fetch a price, just like so many other ideologies that are worthless to workers. They would probably like us to not be too hard on them, for they are entrepreneurs who have marketing considerations on their mind, and little else. Criticisms of their product are not welcome, for it might interfere with its future marketability. We all know how easily we are fooled by lies and tricks. But, has anyone asked if any of us are willing to be led by truth? How financially rewarding can telling the truth be, when so much else is based upon lies and makes so much money? Would any leader want any more than to convert to 'a more plausible system of fraud than what the next guy is willing to dish out'? Can progressive people defraud their way to a better world, or is a better world something that will come about only when progressives devote themselves to finding facts and looking for truth, no matter how difficult the chore, or the sacrifice involved? The rubbish that passes for progressive thought may continue to attract a following as long as the situation is as yet quiet, and the majority of the people can still get by, or can be bought off. Near the end of his 1880 "Development of Socialism From Utopia to Science", Engels wrote about a basic theoretical point of societal control (MESW III, p. 148): "It is, therefore, the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses." This is the stage that society has been in for too long, and though it may not be possible to eliminate the 'violence and robbery' any too soon, one step we can take is to at least do what we can to stop the 'trickery and fraud' that some leaders perpetrated on us. But when such a thing as a change in a Party depends for its success upon members accepting and acting on truth, then, for truth to be the only impetus to change, may very well be asking too much. The SLP just might choose to allow the world to deteriorate a lot further before any of them allow a little doubt to creep into their minds as to the appropriateness of their present path. If we, for once, lived in the kind of world in which it was possible for people to stop pretending they were something that they were not, then the SLP might collectively declare that the jig was up, and would figure out a way to honorably put an end to their fraud. But, perhaps there is not a trace of hope that reason could at all prevail in the world at present, not even in ostensible socialist circles, proving in itself how worthless socialism, anarchism, communism and state ownership are for the lower classes. There may be some who will say that I wrote this book to wreck the Party, to smash 'society's hope' into a thousand pieces so that it will scatter before the wind. But how could such a charge be reconciled with the fact that I urge unity of members around the project of undoing the anarchy, bureaucracy, censorship, fraud, secrecy, cults of personality, states of denial, and sectarianism which so fetter the Party, if it really wants to be a political party. To the charge that this book was written to wreck the Party, one could just as easily make the opposite argument that the alleged Party cannot prevent certain collapse without a drastic intervention of truth-seeking. In its present dress, the Party can do little better than to wreck the workers' movement, to mire it into a stasis, to inspire workers with little more than destructive impulses. 'Destroy the state and replace it with the administration of things, and all will be well.' Bureaucracy, censorship, secrecy, cults of personality, states of denial and sectarianism were the shoddy tools that the workers were provided for their revolutionary quest. How could any book bring a movement to its knees? It is only the members of a party that could possibly affect it one way or the other. For all anyone can tell about the result of this alleged attack on the alleged Party, it could just as likely rejuvenate itself to defend and promote anarcho-syndicalism with a thousand times greater determination than what it exhibits now. It is all up to the members. I am content to have had my say about what they promote. In retrospect, and provided that one can create the time in one's life to investigate a party, the SLP turned out to be the best teacher of Marxism imaginable, provided that one approaches what they promote with a jaundiced eye and suspects that the very opposite is the actual truth. Then one can read their 'literature' and do whatever is necessary to prove or disprove their theses, and in so doing, develop a real perspective on what socialism is, was, and what it might have been, had history been kinder to it. We can therefore thank a teacher like A.P., who probably has proteges in other movements and parties, that other people can go on to investigate in their own movements. For students of social change, the SLP is a good place to get totally frustrated when just starting out. To overcome the frustration is truly in the interest of the workers, and truly a growth experience; and to overcome one's frustration in one's own organization while still in it is doubtlessly worth more than trying to do it from the outside.What's Next? If the attitude of SLP bureaucrats remains purely obstructionist, one way for honest members to avoid the misfortune of watching helplessly while an intractable NO expels Section after Section, or member after member, who possibly become outraged by the lies and want to open up some discussion, would be to withhold acting on their outrage or otherwise keeping cool until they accumulate the mutual support that would ensure that whatever they decide most needs their attention actually receives it. Teaching the NO to serve the Party instead of dominating it may not be an easy task, given their past obstructions of freedom of speech. But, the Party could force an opening up of its internal channels of communication with a theoretical journal in which any relevant topic could be discussed. Potentially, the Party could open up a computer network for that purpose, a move that many other organizations have accomplished with good results. Whatever members do, their first act should be that of creating the mechanism for a full, uncensored discussion of any subject they desire, without possibility of retribution from an angry NO, NEC, Subcommittee, Convention, or any other powerful faction of the Party. If the Commune and the First International were examples of more democratic models, an organization that expresses lower class interests will not saddle members with bureaucracies that conspire in secrecy to deprive members from directly participating in decisions that affect them. It will not micromanage the lives of its members, tell them what they can join or participate in, tell them with whom they can associate, etc. By making unions, parties and other organizations responsible to no one but members, examples can be created and experiences learned from. Confidence could be gained in building organizations to challenge the dominance of the upper class ideology of unbridled competition. It may soon be time for a movement to evolve which is not afraid of the truth, is truly representative of the interests of the lower classes, and does not allow a pack of opportunists to make a career out of forcing ideas upon members. The new organization would utilize present democratic provisions of free speech and association to work for the education of its members in the ways of opportunism, as much as in feasible ways of abolishing class distinctions. What the lower classes need now is a movement in which any one person would be proud to be a member, a movement that uses democracy to promote even more democracy, and promotes social solutions in the context of existing democracies.What Can Be Done? While beginning to write this book in 1992, I had no idea that I would at any time find myself breaking with Lenin, Engels or Marx; but that I did, and precisely on the subject of 'taking away the property of the rich'. Instead, our most pressing need is to build a movement that will work to reduce hours of labor as the most effective means of solving social problems on a fundamental level. Capitalism - the economic system described by Marx as a real social revolution - is a great engine of social progress, mostly because of its ability to liberate people from work, and the producers from their products, painful as that may be to so many people, myself included. To harness this great engine of social progress, instead of trying to demolish it out of hand, to put it to work in the interests of the lower classes, and allow people the free time with which they can develop their talents and abilities, is a goal for a portion of society that cannot stand for so many needs to go unfulfilled, and for so much ignorance and brutality to prevail. We should be flexible enough to be able to reject old methods when history proves them to be useless, and then go back in history if necessary to figure out what would be the most fruitful tactics to apply to the growing problem of unemployment. 'Nobody cares' seems to be what's on people's minds nowadays, and while children run wild in the streets, and we can barely keep our wits together due to having to work 40 or more hours per week, all too little is the time left for us to care for others, our communities, our loved ones, etc. I could only expect that one of the effects of reducing work-hours would be for a portion of us to have more time to care, and, with this massive input of care, for many more social programs to be put in place, for crime to drop, for people to start getting over their sense of powerlessness, etc. In his 1864 "Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association", Marx was unequivocal in his support of reducing hours of labor (MESW II, p. 16): ... "This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Hence the Ten Hours' Bill was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class." ... We will have to contemplate our future and determine if our fate is to enrich the upper classes at our own expense, or to intervene. The latter course will require replacing the unrestrained competition that constitutes the political economy of the upper classes with the political economy of the lower classes - the abolition of competition over diminishing numbers of long-hour opportunities to make the rich richer than their wildest dreams. To debate the debatable, and in order to reach a consensus, we need a forum in which arguments can be made and heard by anyone who wants to take part in the discussion, and in which we can have some cool, unemotional, fact-based arguments. Computer conferences may be a perfect way of solving the problems of organizing ideas, and of making valuable information accessible. The unreserved freedom of speech that can be achieved in that medium may enable us to solve the theoretical or practical problems of the structure of the forum in which organizations of the lower classes may fully discuss strategy and tactics. A memory bank of everything that is submitted to it, and a full index to the ideas is technologically feasible. The Internet can become a great asset to the lower classes in helping develop a real dialogue, but the Internet as yet falls short of reaching many who would benefit by self-expression. A weekly printout of submissions, organized and categorized in a newspaper format, could serve for a while to bring the forum to those who are still far removed from access to technology. With the passage of time, and with the accompanying cheapening of Internet technologies, old-fashioned hard-copy formats may never enter the picture. Secrecy would be of zero importance in free speech electronic mediums, since the intentions of the movement are entirely peaceful toward all. It wants little more than for everyone to be able to earn a living for as long as human labor is still essential to productive processes.(End Part F. Continued in Part G.)(Part G)APPENDICESAPPENDIX ONE: Engels on America and the SLPText coloring decodes as follows: Black: Ken Ellis Red: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Green: Press report, etc. Blue: Correspondent, adversary, SLP-related Purple: Unreliable Info Brown: Inaccurate quote, but true to intent The roots of the Socialist Labor Party go back to over a century ago, evolving out of the Workingmen's Party, which was organized shortly after the First International disbanded in 1876. In its early history, the SLP was substantially composed of German immigrants, many of whom fled Germany's repressive political climate of the 1870's and 80's, especially during the tyranny of its Anti-Socialist Law of 1878-90. The German-American socialists tended to look upon their Party as a mere branch of their native German Workers' Party, which was heavily influenced by Marx and Engels, but, alas, strongly reflected the perspectives of Ferdinand Lasalle. Many of Engels' letters in this Appendix were written to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, who emigrated to the USA after the mid-19th century revolutionary battles in Germany. Sorge's correspondence with Marx and Engels on matters relating to the First International began in 1867, leading to a close friendship. For all of his accomplishments and importance, Sorge rated hardly a mention in SLP literature. Criticisms of SLP administrations caused both Sorge and Engels to be boycotted by the Party before and after 1889. The rather low esteem Engels expressed for the NEC was only made worse by the Aveling affair, which is also heavily documented in this Appendix. A good portion of the correspondence illustrated many developments in working class movements here and abroad. As the scope of my research for this book expanded, the correspondence of Marx and Engels - beyond what was commonly available in English when I wrote the book - took on a greater significance. For translation assistance with the MEW correspondence, I wish to thank Leonore Veltfort of the Niebyl-Proctor Library in Berkeley, California. Though many of the following excerpts do not touch directly upon either the SLP or the various workers' movements, they are valuable for their portrayals of an earlier America, some of the finer points of republicanism, party tactics, publishing, personalities and socialists of the era, etc. The second letter referred to a labor paper called The New Yorker Volkszeitung, which served many of the New York socialists of that era. Though many contributors and owners were SLP members, the Volkszeitung was not directly a Party organ. The SLP later added some diversity in the media by starting Der Sozialist (1885-92), and it also absorbed an English-language journal, the Workmen's Advocate (see Appendix 2). Unless noted otherwise, most of the following extracts are from "Letters to Americans 1848-1895" by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, New World Paperbacks Edition (NW 4), 1963, International Publishers Co., Inc.ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 131-2) London, June 20, 1882 ... "The presumption of the Lassalleans after their arrival in America was inevitable. People who carried the only true gospel with them in their bag could not speak unpretentiously to the Americans, still languishing in spiritual darkness. What was at stake, moreover, was finding a new footing in America to take the place of the one that was disappearing more and more under their feet in Germany. To make up for it we are happily rid of them in Germany; in America, where everything proceeds ten times as fast, they will soon be disposed of." . . . That prediction was one of many examples of Engels' over-optimism.ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 139) London, April 24, 1883 ... "The Volkszeitung has made enough blunders, but still not as many as I expected. And all of them have done their part - Schewitsch, Cuno, Douai, Hepner. They were a know-better quartet of people who know damned little, jointly and severally. Still I felt obliged to write a few lines to the editors; they had printed my cable to you as one addressed to them, and merely falsified the second one, to them, to the effect that Marx died in Argenteuil. We wrote that we here refused to put up with that; in doing this they would make it impossible for me to send them any more communications, and if they again permitted themselves to misuse my name in such a manner they would compel me to ask you at once to state publicly that the whole thing was a forgery on their part. The gentlemen should practice their Yankee humbug among themselves. Moreover, the Americans are much more decent: according to the Volkszeitung a telegram had been sent to me, which I never received, and almost believed the gentlemen of the Volkszeitung had pocketed the money themselves. Now Van Patten writes that no money at all had been available. Now I am compelled to publish this here, otherwise it would be said that I had kept the telegram from the Paris press and the Sozialdemokrat. The answer regarding Most that I sent Van Patten in reply to his inquiry will no doubt have been published before this letter arrives. "At the Copenhagen Congress it was decided that Liebknecht and Bebel visit America next spring. It is a question of money for the election campaigns of 1884-85 (all this between the two of us). Liebknecht has suggested that Tussy [Eleanor Marx] go along as his secretary, and she would very much like to do so; thus you are very likely to see her there soon. We haven't made any plans at all as yet." ... Van Patten, referred to in the previous letter, was a member of the New York Central Labor Union, and was also SLP National Secretary. He wrote to Engels on April 2, 1883, inquiring (LTA, p. 137): "When all parties were united in connection with the recent memorial celebration in honor of Karl Marx, many loud declarations were made on the part of Johann Most and his friends that Most had stood in close relation to Marx and had popularized his work, Capital, in Germany and that Marx had been in agreement with the propaganda which Most had conducted. We have a very high opinion of the capacities and the activity of Karl Marx, but we cannot believe that he was in sympathy with the anarchistic and disorganizing methods of Most, and I should like to hear your opinion as to the attitude of Karl Marx on the question of anarchism versus socialism. Most's ill-advised, stupid chatter has already done us too much harm here, and it is very unpleasant for us to hear that such a great authority as Marx approved of such tactics." Some 64+ years later, A.P. quoted Engels' letter to Van Patten without credit (see Part C) in his 1947 preface to Engels' "Socialism: From Utopia to Science". A.P.'s claims that he, De Leon, and the SLP also stood on Marxist principles were consistent with the declarations of Johann Most, but were all false.ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 141) London, June 29, 1883 ... "Schewitsch has replied to me "dignifiedly," regretting my "pettiness." Dignity sits well on him. He'll get no answer. "Nor will Most, who must confirm everything I assert, and for that reason is so furious. I believe he will find support in that sectarian land, America, and cause trouble for some time. But that is just the character of the American movement: that all mistakes must be experienced in practice. If American energy and vitality were backed by European theoretical clarity, the thing would be finished over there in ten years. But that is impossible historically."Engels to Eduard Bernstein in Zürich(MEW 36, pp. 97-8) London, February 5, 1884 ... "I quite agree with you on von der Mark and the "Volkszeitung"*. At Marx's death, Schewitsch falsified my telegram to Sorge and printed it as if it had been sent to the "V.Z.". I protested. He covered the falsification with the lie that the first word was indecipherable - but he printed it correctly! and the other thing he deemed "necessary in the interest of the paper"! Furthermore, he said, my propaganda was "petty". However it was not "petty" [kleinlich] but rather gross [grosslich] how the gentlemen exploited Marx's death for propaganda for themselves and to proclaim their half alliance with {Johann} Most. But Schewitsch is the last socialist Russian aristocrat, and they must always "go farthest" and are accustomed to use the whole world as a means to their ends. The tolerance article was simply silly. The Russians quarreled among themselves amiably [con amore], and the Irish too."__________ * "In the Sunday edition of the "New Yorker Volkszeitung" of Dec. 2, 1883, under the pseudonym "von der Mark", an article by the editor Wilhelm Ludwig Rosenberg had been published which declared the state to be an abstract concept, an alliance of individuals. Under his pseudonym "Leo", Eduard Bernstein published in the "Sozialdemokrat" on December 20, 1883, a reply: "Socialism and the State". Bernstein quoted verbatim Engels' ideas expressed in the third part of "Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft" {Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science} about the historic function of the state and Lasalles's "free people's state" cliché, and then discussed polemically Lassalle's, as well as the anarchist concept of the state. Speaking to the anarchists, Bernstein emphasized that it was necessary to conquer the state "not to do away with it as the anarchists pretend to want." The article ended with the call: "Therefore no delusion about our final goal, but also no mistake about the way to this goal! It is: Win the power in the state." "On January 3, 1884, Rosenberg published in the "New Yorker Volkszeitung" under the heading "Herr Leo" a second article in which he tried to show that Engels and August Bebel, since they stood for the dying off of the state and for the idea of no rulers, had made a concession to the anarchists' ideal of statelessness." {From a footnote by the Publisher.}ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 142) London, March 7, 1884 . . . "I shall hardly have the time to enter into a debate with Stiebeling. Such little gods can safely be left to themselves. Besides, sectarianism cannot be prevented in America for years to come. And so the great {Johann} Most will also end up as Karl Heinz the Second, no doubt. I am getting the Wochen [Weekly] -Volkszeitung, but there isn't much in it. "I do not know how matters stand with the trip of Bebel, Liebknecht, or someone else to America. In reply to their inquiry I told them that, in my opinion, it would not do to tap America [financially] every three years for the elections. The situation in Germany, moreover, is very good. Our boys are standing up to it famously. The {Anti-} Socialist Law is involving them in a local struggle with the police everywhere, which entails lots of cleverness and trickery and usually ends victoriously for us, providing the best propaganda in the world. All the bourgeois papers utter sighs from time to time over the enormous progress of our people, and they are all afraid of the coming elections." ... In the next letter, Engels speculated on the effects if that year's electoral victories for the German Workers' Party could be duplicated by workers' parties in America and elsewhere.Engels to August Bebel in Plauen bei Dresden(MEW 36, pp. 214-5) London, October 11, 1884 ... "The election excitement has been going around in my head all day long. Our three-year-old great test is an event of European importance, in contrast to which the panic journeys of all the emperors mean nothing. I remember too well how in 1875 the election victories of our side took off in Europe and chased the Bakunist Anarchism from the stage in Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. And just now such an effect is very much needed again. The caricature anarchists à la {Johann} Most who have already come down from Rinaldo Rinaldini to Schinderhannes and below would, at least for Europe, receive a similar blow and save us a lot of effort. In America, where sects live forever, they could then slowly die off - after all, Karl Heinz kept himself going there for 25 years after he was dead and buried in Europe. The provincial French, who are developing very well, would be much encouraged and the Paris masses would receive a new impulse to emancipate themselves from their position as the tail of the extreme Left. Here in England where the reform bill gives the workers new power, this impulse would come just in time for the next election in 1885 and would offer an opportunity to the Social Democratic Federation - which consists only of the old literati on the one hand, old sectarian remains on the other hand and a sentimental public in the third place - to really become a party. In America, only such an event is still needed to make the English speaking workers finally realize what power they have if they would only use it. And in Italy and Spain it would be a new blow for continuing anarchistic doctrinaire clap-trap. In one word, the victories you achieve have an effect from Siberia to California and from Sicily to Sweden." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, p. 248) London, November 23, 1884 ... "Bernstein's letter to Paul about Lassalle finds its explanation in this, that in Paris, as in London and New York, the old Lassalle set is still strongly represented among the Germans. They have mostly emigrated, Germany is too hot for them and won't listen to them. But as they are comparatively harmless abroad, and form a useful international cement, besides finding funds for the Germans at home, on les ménage un peu [one fosters them a little]." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 144-5) London, February 10, 1885 "I herewith return Mr. Putnam's letter - of course it would be a splendid success if we could secure publication by that firm - but I am afraid Mr. P. will stick to his objections, the great strength of which, from a publisher's standpoint, I fully recognize. Perhaps the fact that a new German edition of my work is in actual preparation may shake him a little. My friends in Germany say that the book {"The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"} is important to them just now because it describes a state of things which is almost exactly reproduced at the present moment in Germany; and as the development of manufacturing industry, steam and machinery, and their social outcrop in the creation of a proletariat, in America corresponds at the present moment as nearly as possible to the English status of 1844 (though your go-ahead people are sure to outstrip the old world in the next 15-20 years altogether), the comparison of industrial England of 1844 with industrial America of 1885 might have its interest too. "Of course in the new preface to the English translation I shall refer as fully as space will permit to the change in the condition of the British working class which has taken place in the interval; to the improved position of a more or less privileged minority, to the certainly not alleviated misery of the great body, and especially to the impending change for the worse which must necessarily follow the breakdown of the industrial monopoly of England in consequence of the increasing competition, in the markets of the world, of Continental Europe and especially of America."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 146-7) London, June 3, 1885 . . . "Thanks for the Gr?nlund and Ely {American Socialist writers}, as well as for the newspapers. Ely is a well-meaning philistine and at least takes more pains than his German companions in adversity and stupidity, which is always to be appreciated. Gr?nlund, on the other hand, makes a strongly speculative impression on me; his pushing of our views, to the extent that he understands them or not, obviously serves to push his own utopianisms as real live German socialism. In any event, a symptom. . . . "You had the same correct forebodings about the Reichstag fellows that I did - they let tremendous petty-bourgeois desires come to light in connection with the steamship subsidy. It almost resulted in a split, which is not desirable at the present time, as long as the {Anti-}Socialist Law is in force. But as soon as we have some more elbow-room in Germany, the split will doubtless occur and then it cannot but be helpful. A petty-bourgeois Socialist fraction {of the party} is unavoidable in a country like Germany, where philistinism, even more than historical law, "ain't got no beginning." It is also useful as soon as it has constituted itself apart from the proletarian party. But this separation now would be merely harmful, if it were provoked by us. If they themselves disavow the program in practice, however, so much the better, and we can seize upon it. "You in America also suffer from all sorts of great scholars such as Germany's petty-bourgeois socialists possess in Geiser, Frohme, Blos, etc. The historical digressions of the Stiebelings, Douais, etc., on migrations in the Sozialist amused me very much, since these people have studied all that much better and much more thoroughly than I have. Douai, in particular, gives himself extraordinary airs. Thus, in No. 13 of the Sozialist he says: In the German conquests in Italy, etc., the king received one-third of the land, two-thirds going to the soldiers and officers, of which in turn two-thirds went to the former slaves, etc. "As can be read in Jornandes and Cassiodorus." I was dumbfounded when I read all that. "The same is reported regarding the Visigoths." "Nor was it otherwise in France." Now all that is invented from A to Z, and neither in Jornandes nor in Cassiodorus nor in any other contemporary source is there a word of it. It is both colossal ignorance and impudence to throw such nonsense up to me and to tell me I am "demonstrably wrong." The sources, practically all of which I know, state exactly the contrary. I have let it pass this time because it happened in America, where one can hardly fight such a matter out; let Monsieur Douai take care in the future - I might lose patience sometime." . . .ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 148) London, January 7, 1886 "I have received your Ms. {Manuscript} but have not as yet been able to look at it, so cannot say how long it will take me. Anyhow I shall lose no time, you may be sure. As to those wise Americans who think their country exempt from the consequences of fully expanded capitalist production, they seem to live in blissful ignorance of the fact that sundry states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc., have such an institution as a Labor Bureau, from the reports of which they might learn something to the contrary."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 148) London, January 29, 1886 . . . "An American woman [Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky] has translated my book on the working class in England and has also sent me the manuscript for revision - some passages of which will take some time. Publication in America is assured, but I can't understand what this person now finds in the old thing. . . . Give Dietzgen my regards. He has a hard row to hoe, but it will come out all right. After all, the movement in America is making fine progress. It was not to be expected that the Anglo-Americans go at the thing other than in their way, contemptuous of reason and science, but they are coming closer none the less. And, finally, they will come over altogether. Capitalist centralization is proceeding there with seven-league boots, quite otherwise than over here."ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 149) London, February 3, 1886 "If I am not too often interrupted in the evenings, I hope to be able to send you the remainder of the Ms. {Manuscript} and possibly also the introduction in a fortnight. This latter may be printed either as a preface or as an appendix. As to the length of it I am utterly incapable of giving you any idea. I shall try to make it as short as possible, especially as it will be useless for me to try to combat arguments of the American press with which I am not even superficially acquainted. Of course, if American workingmen will not read their own states' Labor Reports, but trust to politicians' extracts, nobody can help them. But it strikes me that the present chronic depression, which seems endless so far, will tell its tale in America as well as in England. America will smash up England's industrial monopoly - whatever there is left of it - but America cannot herself succeed to that monopoly. And unless one country has the monopoly of the markets of the world, at least in the decisive branches of the trade, the conditions - relatively favorable - which existed here in England from 1848 to 1870 cannot anywhere be reproduced, and even in America the condition of the working class must gradually sink lower and lower. For if there are three countries (say England, America, and Germany) competing on comparatively equal terms for the possession of the Weltmarkt [world market], there is no chance but chronic overproduction, one of the three being capable of supplying the whole quantity required. That is the reason why I am watching the development of the present crisis with greater interest than ever and why I believe it will mark an epoch in the mental and political history of the American and English working classes - the very two whose assistance is as absolutely necessary as it is desirable."FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, p. 335) London, February 9, 1886 ... "At last I have got nearly the whole of the Ms. of the English translation of Vol. I (of Capital) in my hands; the small remnant Edward has promised for Sunday. I shall go at it this week - the only thing that keeps me from it is the revision of a translation (English) of my old book on the English working class by an American lady who has also found a publisher for it in America-strange to say! This I do in the evenings and shall - unless much interrupted - finish this week." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 151) London, February 25, 1886 ... "I am glad that all obstacles to publication have been successfully overcome. Only I am sorry that Miss Foster has applied to the Executive of the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei {SLP} in New York, as appears from their report of meeting in Der Sozialist, New York, February 13. Neither Marx nor myself has ever committed the least act which might be interpreted into asking any workingmen's organization to do us any personal favor - and this was necessary not only for the sake of our own independence but also on account of the constant bourgeois denunciations of "demagogues who coax the workingmen out of their hard-earned pennies in order to spend them for their own purposes." I shall therefore be compelled to inform that Executive that this application was made entirely without my knowledge or authority. Miss F. no doubt acted in what she thought the best way, and this step of hers is in itself no doubt perfectly admissible; still, if I could have foreseen it, I would have been compelled to do everything in my power to prevent it. "The revision of your translation has delayed that of the English translation of Das Kapital by three weeks - and at a most critical period of the year too. I shall set about it tonight and it may take me several months. After that, the German third volume must be taken in hand; you see, therefore, that for some time it will be impossible for me to undertake the revision of other translations, unless few and far between and of small volume." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 152) London, March 12, 1886 "Deeply buried as I am in the English Capital, I have only the time to write a few lines in haste. It did not require all your exposition of the circumstances to convince me that you were perfectly innocent of what had been done in America with your translation. The thing is done and can't be helped, though we both are convinced that it was a mistake. ... "And now I cannot conclude without expressing to you my most sincere thanks to you for the very great trouble you have taken to revive, in English, a book of mine which is half-forgotten in the original German."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 153) London, April 29, 1886 ... "To be sure, I had not suspected that Douai was so terribly underrated as a great man. May he take with him into the grave the consciousness of his greatness, together with all of its underrating, without seeing it lessened by sugar-coating. But he was the right man for America, and if he had remained an ordinary democrat, I would have wished him the best of luck. But as it is, he got into the wrong pew. ... "I think I have already written you that an American lady, married to a Russian, has gotten it into her head to translate my old book. I looked over the translation, which required considerable work. But she wrote that publication was assured and that it had to be done at once, and so I had to go at it. Now it turns out that she turned the negotiations over to a Miss Foster, the secretary of a women's rights society, and the latter committed the blunder of giving it to the Socialist Labor Party. I told the translator what I thought of this, but it was too late. Moreover, I am glad that the gentlemen over there do not translate anything of mine; it would turn out beautifully. Their German is enough, and then their English! "The gentlemen of the Volkszeitung must be satisfied. They have gained control of the whole movement among the Germans, and their business must be flourishing. It is a matter of course that a man like Dietzgen is pushed to the rear there. Playing with the boycott and with little strikes is, of course, much more important than theoretical education. But with all that the cause is moving ahead mightily in America. A real mass movement {the Henry George boom} exists among the English-speaking workers for the first time. That it proceeds gropingly at first, clumsy, unclear, unknowing, is unavoidable. All that will be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is a characteristic of all young peoples, but so is rapidity of practical development. As in England, all the preaching is of no use in America until the actual necessity exists. And this is present in America now, and they are becoming conscious of it. The entrance of masses of native-born workers into the movement in America is for me one of the greatest events of 1886. As for the Germans over there, let the sort now flourishing join the Americans gradually; they will still be somewhat ahead of them. And, lastly, there still is a core among the Germans over there which retains theoretical insight into the nature and the course of the whole movement, keeps the process of fermentation going, and finally rises to the top again. ... ... "Another thing. A Mr. J. T. McEnnis interviewed me a few days ago under the pretext of getting advice on labor legislation for the State of Missouri. I soon discovered that newspaper business was behind it, and he confessed that he was working for the leading democratic paper of St. Louis, but gave me his word of honor that he would submit every word to me in advance for revision. The man was sent to me by the Russian Stepniak. Nearly two weeks have passed, and I am afraid he did not keep his promise. I have forgotten the name of the St. Louis paper. Therefore, if anything is printed regarding the interview, please have the enclosed statement printed in Der Sozialist, the Volkszeitung, and anywhere else you think necessary. If the man does come and keep his promise, I shall, of course, let you know at once, and you can then tear up the statement." ... For the lack of an opportunity to edit the final version of the interview, Engels disclaimed whatever would have been printed without his approval. His disclaimer stated in part: ... "I had an opportunity to convince myself that Mr. McEnnis, for lack of the necessary rudimentary knowledge, would hardly be able, even with the best of intentions, to understand my remarks correctly."FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, p. 353) May 7, 1886 ... "On the other hand, in Paris our movement has reached that stage when even a mistake made would not do it too much harm. Of course the speed of future progress depends a great deal upon the leadership given by the heads of groups; but once the masses are on the move, they are like a healthy body which has the strength to eliminate the elements of disease and even a little poison."Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Leipzig(MEW 36, p. 483) London, May 12, 1886 ... "The Chicago-affair probably means the end of the anarchist comedy in America. People are allowed to yell as much as they want, but with regard to pointless brawls the Americans have no tolerance since they have become an industrial nation." ...Engels to Eduard Bernstein in Zürich(MEW 36, pp. 486-7) London, May 22, 1886 ... "Our Frenchmen are doing fine. Here, on the other hand, everything remains amateurish play. The anarchist stupidities in America can become useful; it is not desirable that the American workers achieve too rapid successes while they are at their present still quite bourgeois stage of thinking - high wages and short working time. That could strengthen the one-sided trades-union spirit more than necessary." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, p. 355) London, May 23, 1886 ... "The victory at Dec[azeville] would have been exceedingly nice, but after all the defeat may be more useful to the movement in the long run. So I do believe, too, that the anarchist follies of Chicago will do much good. If the present American movement - which so far as it is not exclusively German, is still in the Trades Union stage - had got a great victory on the 8 hours question, Trades Unionism would have become a fixed and final dogma. While a mixed result will help to show them that it is necessary to go beyond "high wages and short hours.""LAURA LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON(ELC I, pp. 356-7) Paris, May 25, 1886 ... "I cannot help thinking that they are rather overdoing it in the American Sozialist with Deutschland {Germany}. It may be all right in the States but it is all wrong for France. It has been hard enough to get the glib and skipping Frenchies to take kindly to the ponderous "têtes carrées" [square-heads (i.e., Germans)] and, even were it true, it is impolitic to boast that the whole of the French movement is kept alive by German money. It is taking away all value from the subscriptions received from Germany, the moral effect of which has been so great." ...ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY IN ZURICH(MESC, pp. 371-2) London, June 3, 1886 "Whatever the mistakes and the Borniertheit [Narrow-mindedness] of the leaders of the movement, and partly of the newly awakening masses too, one thing is certain: the American working class is moving, and no mistake. And after a few false starts, they will get into the right track soon enough. This appearance of the Americans upon the scene I consider one of the greatest events of the year. What the breakdown of Russian Czarism would be for the great military monarchies of Europe - the snapping of their mainstay - that is for the bourgeois of the whole world the breaking out of class war in America. For America after all was the ideal of all bourgeois; a country rich, vast, expanding, with purely bourgeois institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchical traditions and without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. Here everyone could become, if not a capitalist, at all events an independent man, producing or trading, with his own means, for his own account. And because there were not, as yet, classes with opposing interests, our - and your - bourgeois thought that America stood above class antagonisms and struggles. That delusion has now broken down, the last Bourgeois Paradise on earth is fast changing into a Purgatorio, and can only be prevented from becoming, like Europe, an Inferno by the go-ahead pace at which the development of the newly fledged proletariat of America will take place. The way in which they have made their appearance on the scene is quite extraordinary: six months ago nobody suspected anything, and now they appear all of a sudden in such organised masses as to strike terror into the whole capitalist class. I only wish Marx could have lived to see it!" ... About American conditions, Marx wrote in Capital in 1867 (NW 17, p. 773): ... "[T]he American Civil War brought in its train a colossal national debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes, the rise of the vilest financial aristocracy, the squandering of a huge part of the public land on speculative companies for the exploitation of railways, mines, &c., in brief, the most rapid centralisation of capital. The great republic has, therefore, ceased to be the promised land for emigrant labourers. Capitalistic production advances there with giant strides, even though the lowering of wages and the dependence of the wage-worker are yet far from being brought down to the normal European level." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 158-60) Eastbourne, August 13, 1886 ... "If the thing {"The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State"} is to come out in English at all, it ought to be published in such a way that the public can get hold of it through the regular book trade. That will not be the case, as far as I can see, with Die Lage {"The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"}. Unless the trade arrangements are very different in America from those in Europe, the booksellers will not deal in works published by outside establishments belonging to a workingmen's party. This is why Chartist and Owenite publications are nowhere preserved and nowhere to be had, not even in the British Museum, and why all our German party publications are - and were, long before the Socialist Law - not to be had through the trade, and remained unknown to the public outside the party. That is a state of things which sometimes cannot be avoided but ought to be avoided wherever possible. And you will not blame me if I wish to avoid it for the English translations of my writings, having suffered from it in Germany for more than forty years. The state of things in England is such that publishers can be got - either now or in the near future - for socialist works, and I have no doubt that in the course of next year I can have an English translation published here and the translator paid; and as I have moreover long since promised Dr. Aveling the translation of the Entwicklung [Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] and the Ursprung {"Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"}, if he can make it pay for himself, you see that an American edition, brought out outside the regular book trade, would only spoil the chance of a London edition to be brought out in the way of the regular trade and therefore accessible to the public generally and everywhere. "Moreover, I do not think that this book is exactly what is wanted at the present moment by the American workingman. Das Kapital will be at their service before the year is out; that will serve them for a pièce de résistance [main dish]. For lighter, more popular literature, for real propaganda, my booklet will scarcely serve. In the present undeveloped state of the movement, I think perhaps some of the French popularizations would answer best. ... "August 14. To return to the Ursprung. I do not mean to say that I have absolutely promised Aveling to let him have it, but I consider myself bound to him in case a translation is to come out in London. The final decision then would depend very much upon the nature of the publishing arrangements you can make in America. To a repetition of what Miss Foster has done with Die Lage I decidedly object. When I see my way to an English edition, brought out by a firm known in the bourgeois trade, and not only of this book, but probably of a collection of various other writings, with the advantage of having the translation done here (which saves me a deal of time), you will admit that I ought to look twice before sanctioning the bringing out, in America, of this little book alone and thereby spoiling the whole arrangement. And with the present anti-socialist scare in America, I doubt whether you will find regular publishers very willing to associate their name with socialist works. "A very good bit of work would be a series of pamphlets stating in popular language the contents of Das Kapital. The theory of surplus value, No. 1; the history of the various forms of surplus value (cooperation, manufacture, modern industry), No. 2; accumulation and the history of primitive accumulation, No. 3; the development of surplus value making in colonies (last chapter), No. 4 - this would be specially instructive in America, as it would give the economic history of that country, from a land of independent peasants to a centre of modern industry and might be completed by specially American facts. "In the meantime you may be sure that it will take some time yet before the mass of the American working people will begin to read socialist literature. And for those that do read and will read, there is matter enough being provided, and least of all will Der Ursprung be missed by them. With the Anglo-Saxon mind, and especially with the eminently practical development it has taken in America, theory counts for nothing until imposed by dire necessity, and I count above all things upon the teaching our friends will receive by the consequences of their own blunders to prepare them for theoretical schooling."Engels to August Bebel in Plauen bei Dresden(MEW 36, p. 509) London, August 18, 1886 ... "This entrance of the Americans into the movement, and the revival of the French movement by the three Labor deputies and Decazeville - those are the two world historic events of this year. In America various stupidities are happening - the Anarchists here, the Knights of Labor there - but that doesn't matter, the thing is going and will develop quickly. There will be many disappointments - the wirepullers of the old political parties are already getting ready to get the sprouting Labor Party under their secret direction - and quite colossal blunders will be made, but nevertheless things will proceed more rapidly there than elsewhere. "In France the 108,000 votes for Roche have proven that the radical workers are beginning to dissociate themselves from the Radicals, and that in masses. To secure this success, this newly-won position, our people have managed to have the temporary organization for Roche's election changed into a permanent one, and so they have become the theoretical teachers of the workers who are turning away from the Radicals. All these people call themselves Socialists, but are learning now through bitter experience that their faded trash by Proudhon and L. Blanc is pure bourgeois and petty-bourgeois muck, and therefore are sufficiently open to Marx's theory. That is the result of the Radicals being half in power; should they get complete power, all the workers will secede, and I assert: victory for Radicalism, i.e. the faded old French Socialism in the Chamber means victory for Marxism, first in the Paris City Council. Oh, if only Marx could have seen this, how his maxim holds good in France and America, that the democratic republic today is nothing but the battle-ground on which the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is being fought." ... Let us digress here into a portion of a story about Joseph Dietzgen, as reported in Sorge's book entitled "The Labor Movement in the United States" (pp. 242-3): ... "Since the majority of the organized German workers are socialists, one could assume that by the description of the activities of German workers in the United States the discussion concerns only socialists. However - there are socialists and Socialists. There are socialists as such, to which most of the organized German workers belong, and there are Socialists in particular, official Socialists, members of the Socialist Labor Party, socialists par excellence. There remains something to be said about the latter, especially about their national executive committee, their executive, as it is called here for short. "The executive of the Socialist Labor Party resided during this whole period in the two neighboring towns of New York City and Brooklyn and made continuous, if largely unsuccessful, efforts to expand this socialist organization. During the first three years (1886-1889) especially, the executive strictly adhered to the letter of socialist dogma and thus often lost the spirit of it. They obstinately insisted on adhering to the statute of the organization without considering the peculiar development of the situation which cannot be forced into a straitjacket; they always wanted to be first and often ended up last because of their clumsiness. They lacked understanding of the important events in 1886 and 1887 and the initiative to exploit these events for the socialist cause, as well as the courage and virility to maintain a secure position. "During the great New Yorkers' election campaign in 1886, the executive acted rather listlessly, and it approved the 1887 campaign (Progressive Labor Party) only a few days before the election. The executive observed the struggle almost indifferently because the little word socialist did not appear at the head of the ballot and proclamations. These people missed the point that movement, vigorous agitation, is the first requisite for existence and any progress. They embraced words instead and finally collapsed pitifully. "When the bomb exploded in the Haymarket and the white terror reigned in Chicago, when the workers' press was censored there, the right of assembly suspended, the personal security of the habeas corpus abolished, and the sanctity of the home disrespected, when the official bourgeoisie started to destroy the leaders of the proletariat in the giant city on Lake Michigan, then the executive of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) could think of nothing better to do than to whine into the world and into the ears of the bourgeoisie: We are no anarchists, we have nothing to do with them. "Josef Dietzgen, the philosopher of the proletariat as Marx called him, moved to Chicago in March 1886 where the executive ordered him to remain as a co-worker of the Socialist, the central organ of the SLP, and to write reports of the situation in and around Chicago. Almost every number of the journal in March and April of 1886 contained writings by Dietzgen. When his report on the Haymarket bomb affair reached the editorial staff of the Socialist, they showed it to the executive, which rejected it. The latter asked its secretary to inform Dietzgen that his report, the report of an eyewitness, did not agree with the point of view of the executive sitting 1,000 miles away and therefore could not be published. Fear, it seemed, lay in the bones of this peculiar labor party executive, and it is almost surprising that they did not fare as Lingenau, who became famous through his last will and who died as a result of the fears that the poor fellow suffered during the railroad unrest. "The executive thirsted quite madly for a testimonial of good behavior, and the police finally relented and gave it a certificate of good conduct for the person who replaced Dietzgen. This man wrote his reports for the Socialist to the liking of his bosses in New York. As it happened, the police arrested him, as they did many people in Chicago at that time. He was brought before a police captain who questioned him about his work and status. The party comrade and correspondent of the Socialist explained to the policeman that he tried to write about the mistakes and sins of the anarchists with whom neither he nor his party comrades had anything in common. The supervisor of the law and nightstick heroes was happy to make the acquaintance of such a solid, honorable man and released him with the following words, recorded by the correspondent. "You are a right fellow; go home and write that, it's all right!" "One should compare that with the deeds and presence of Dietzgen" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 161) London, September 16, 1886 ... "A fine gang seems to be at the head of the party in New York; the Sozialist is a model of what a paper should not be. But neither can I support Dietzgen in his article on the anarchists* - he has a peculiar way of dealing with things. If a person has a perhaps somewhat narrow opinion on a certain point, Dietzgen cannot emphasize enough (and often too much) that the matter has two sides. But now, because the New Yorkers are behaving contemptibly, he suddenly takes the other side and wants to picture us all as anarchists. The moment may excuse this, but he shouldn't forget all his dialectics at the decisive moment. However, he has gotten over it by now, no doubt, and is certainly back on the right track; I have no worries on that score. "In a country as untouched as America, which has developed in a purely bourgeois fashion without any feudal past, but has unwittingly taken over from England a whole store of ideology from feudal times, such as the English common law, religion, and sectarianism, and where the exigencies of practical labor and the concentrating of capital have produced a contempt for all theory, which is only now disappearing in the educated circles of scholars - in such a country the people must become conscious of their own social interests by making blunder after blunder. Nor will that be spared the workers; the confusion of the trade unions, socialists, Knights of Labor, etc., will persist for some time to come, and they will learn only by their own mistakes. But the main thing is that they have started moving, that things are going ahead generally, that the spell is broken; and they will go fast, too, faster than anywhere else, even though on a singular road, which seems, from the theoretical standpoint, to be an almost insane road." ...__________ * "In an article in the Chicago Vorbote, Dietzgen had proposed that no distinction should be made, for the time being, between anarchists, socialists, and communists." {Note by International Publishers.}FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, p. 373) London, September 24, 1886 ... "I had a letter from Tussy {Eleanor} on her arrival in N[ew] Y[ork], she had a very pleasant voyage, but was rather disappointed at the live American bourgeois she met on board; it rather damped her enthusiasm for America, but prepared her for the realities of American life." ...PAUL LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON(ELC I, p. 376) Paris, September 30, 1886 ... "Our acquittal has been an immense victory; it is the first time that the bourgeois have acquitted Socialists because they are Socialists: that is a big step. It shows, to some extent, that the bourgeoisie is ready for some part of our theories. Unfortunately the anarchistic form is too beloved in France, otherwise we could do more propaganda amongst the bourgeois, who are frightened off by the large phrases of the anarchists which the revolutionaries are compelled to use up to a point. "What a success the three travelers in socialism have had in New York! The telegraph reports their triumphal progress. This trip will have big repercussions in America and in England: it will greatly help the development of the American socialist movement and give Tussy and Aveling standing in England. They may on their return exercise greater influence on the Socialist League and guide it in the right direction." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, pp. 377-8) London, October 2, 1886 ... "I am afraid Paul exaggerates the significance of the Paris verdict in so far as it is a symptom of the accessibility of the industrial bourgeoisie for socialist ideas. The struggle between usurer and industrial capitalist is one within the bourgeoisie itself, and though no doubt a certain number of petty bourgeois will be driven over to us by the certainty of their impending expropriation de la part des boursiers [by the moneybags], yet we can never hope to get the mass of them over to our side. Moreover, this is not desirable, as they bring their narrow class prejudices along with them. In Germany we have too many of them, and it is they who form the dead weight which trammels the march of the party. It will ever be the lot of the petty bourgeois - as a mass - to float undecidedly between the two great classes, one part to be crushed by the centralization of capital, the other by the victory of the proletariat. On the decisive day, they will as usual be tottering, wavering and helpless, se laisseront faire [will offer no resistance], and that is all we want. Even if they come round to our views they will say: of course communism is the ultimate solution, but it is far off, maybe 100 years before it can be realised - in other words: we do not mean to work for its realisation neither in our, nor in our children's lifetime. Such is our experience in Germany. "Otherwise the verdict is a grand victory and marks a decided step in advance. The bourgeoisie, from the moment it is faced by a conscious and organised proletariat, becomes entangled in hopeless contradictions between its liberal and democratic general tendencies here, and the repressive necessities of its defensive struggle against the proletariat there. A cowardly bourgeoisie, like the German and Russian, sacrifices its general class tendencies to the momentary advantages of brutal repression. But a bourgeoisie with a revolutionary history of its own, such as the English and particularly the French, cannot do that so easily. Hence that struggle within the bourgeoisie itself, which in spite of occasional fits of violence and oppression, on the whole drives it forward - see the various electoral reforms of Gladstone in England, and the advance of radicalism in France. This verdict is a new étape [stage]. And so the bourgeoisie, in doing its own work, is doing ours." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC I, pp. 395-6) London, November 24, 1886 "I hope you have recd the American letters I sent you yesterday; today I can keep my word and write. Our people {Liebknecht and the Avelings} have indeed hit upon a lucky moment for their journey, it coincides with the first formation of a real American working men's party and what was practically an immense success, the Henry George "boom" in N[ew] York. Master George is rather a confused sort of a body and being a Yankee, has a nostrum of his own, and not a very excellent one, but his confusion is a very fair expression of the present stage of development of the Anglo-American working-class mind, and we cannot expect even American masses to arrive at theoretical perfection in six or eight months - the age of this movement. And considering that the Germans in America are anything but a fair and adequate sample of the workmen of Germany, but rather of the elements the movement at home has eliminated - Lassalleans, disappointed ambitions, sectarians of all sorts - I for one am not sorry that the Americans start independently of them, or at least of their leadership. As a ferment, the Germans can and will act, and at the same time undergo, themselves, a good deal of useful and necessary fermentation. The unavoidable starting point, in America, are the Knights of Labour, who are a real power, and are sure to form the first embodiment of the movement. Their absurd organisation and very slippery leaders - used to the methods of corrupt American partisanship - will very soon provoke a crisis within that body itself, and then a more adequate and more effective organisation can be developed from it. All this, I think, will not take very long in Yankeeland; the great point gained is that the political action of the working class as an independent party is henceforth established there." ...ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE IN HOBOKEN(MESC, pp. 373-5) London, November 29,1886 "The Henry George boom has of course brought to light a colossal mass of fraud, and I am glad I was not there. But in spite of it all it was an epoch-making day. The Germans {SLP} do not know how to use their theory to set the American masses in motion; most of them do not understand the theory themselves and treat it in a doctrinaire and dogmatic way as something that has got to be learned by heart and which will then satisfy all requirements without more ado. To them it is a credo and not a guide to action. What is more, they learn no English on principle. Hence the American masses had to seek out their own path and seem to have found it for the time being in the Knights of Labor, whose confused principles and ludicrous organisation seem to correspond to their own confusion. But from all I hear, the Knights of Labor are a real power, especially in New England and the West, and are becoming more so every day owing to the brutal opposition of the capitalists. I think it is necessary to work inside this organisation, to form within this still quite plastic mass a core of people who understand the movement and its aims and will therefore take over the leadership, at least of a section, when the inevitable, now impending break-up of the present "order" takes place. The worst side of the Knights of Labor was their political neutrality, which has resulted in sheer trickery on the part of the Powderlys, etc.; but the edge of this has been taken off by the behaviour of the masses in the November elections, especially in New York. The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, much more rapidly than we had a right to expect, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and extremely deficient and that it has raised the banner of Henry George are unavoidable evils but also merely transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they have the opportunity only when they have a movement of their own - no matter in what form so long as it is their own movement - in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn from their experience. The movement in America is at the same stage as it was in our country before 1848; the really intelligent people there will first have to play the part played by the Communist League among the workers' associations before 1848. Except that in America things will now proceed infinitely faster. For the movement to have gained such election successes after scarcely eight months of existence is wholly unprecedented. And what is still lacking will be set going by the bourgeoisie; nowhere in the whole world do they come out so shamelessly and tyrannically as over there, and your judges brilliantly outshine Bismarck's imperial pettifoggers. Where the bourgeoisie wages the struggle by such methods, a crucial stage is rapidly reached, and if we in Europe do not hurry up the Americans will soon outdistance us. But just now it is doubly necessary that there should be a few people on our side who have a firm grasp of theory and well-tried tactics and can also speak and write English; because for good historical reasons the Americans are worlds behind in all theoretical questions; and although they did not bring over any mediaeval institutions from Europe, the did bring over masses of mediaeval traditions, religion, English common (feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism - in short, every kind of imbecility which was not directly harmful to business and which is now very serviceable for stupefying the masses. If there are some theoretically lucid minds there, who can tell them the consequences of their own mistakes beforehand and make them understand that every movement which does not keep the destruction of the wage system constantly in view as the final goal is bound to go astray and fail - then much nonsense can be avoided and the process considerably shortened. But it must be done in the English way, the specific German character must be laid aside, and the gentlemen of the Sozialist will hardly be capable of doing this, while those of the Volkszeitung are cleverer only where business is involved. "In Europe the effect of the American elections in November was tremendous. That England and America in particular had no labour movement up to now was the big trump card of the radical republicans everywhere, especially in France. Now these gentlemen are dumbfounded; Mr. Clemenceau in particular saw the whole foundation of his policy collapse on November 2nd. "Look at America", was his eternal motto; "where there is a real republic, there is no poverty and no labour movement!" And the same thing is happening to the Progressives and "democrats" in Germany and here - where they are also witnessing the beginnings of their own movement. The very fact that the movement is so sharply accentuated as a labour movement and has sprung up so suddenly and forcefully has stunned these people completely." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 165-7) London, December 28, 1886 ... "Of course the appendix {to "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844"} is now a little out of date, and as I anticipated something of the kind, I proposed that it should be written when the book was ready through the press. Now a preface will be much wanted, and I will write you one; but before, I must await the return of the Avelings to have a full report of the state of things in America; and it seems to me that my preface will not be exactly what you desire. "First, you seem to me to treat New York a little as the Paris of America, and to overrate the importance, for the country at large, of the local New York movement with its local features. No doubt it has a great importance, but then the Northwest, with its background of a numerous farming population and its independent movement, will hardly accept blindly the George theory. "Secondly, the preface of this book is hardly the place for a thoroughgoing criticism of that theory, and does not even offer the necessary space for it. "Thirdly, I should have to study thoroughly Henry George's various writings and speeches (most of which I have not got) so as to render impossible all replies based on subterfuges and side-issues. "My preface will of course turn entirely on the immense stride made by the American workingman in the last ten months, and naturally also touch Henry George and his land scheme. But it cannot pretend to deal extensively with it. Nor do I think the time for that has come. It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root, and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learn by one's own mistakes, "durch Schaden klug werden." {To learn by bitter experience} And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical and so contemptuous of theory as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H{enry} G{eorge} or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own. Therefore I think also the Knights of Labor a most important factor in the movement which ought not to be pooh-poohed from without but to be revolutionised from within, and I consider that many of the Germans there made a grievous mistake when they tried, in the face of a mighty and glorious movement not of their own creation, to make of their imported and not always understood theory a kind of alleinseligmachendes [it alone bringing salvation] Dogma, and to keep aloof from any movement which did not accept that dogma. Our theory is not a dogma but the exposition of a process of evolution, and that process involves successive phases. To expect that the Americans will start with the full consciousness of the theory worked out in older industrial countries is to expect the impossible. What the Germans ought to do is to act up to their own theory - if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 1848 - to go in for any real general working-class movement, accept its faktische [actual] starting point as such, and work it gradually up to the theoretical level by pointing out how every mistake made, every reverse suffered, was a necessary consequence of mistaken theoretical orders in the original programme; they ought, in the words of the Communist Manifesto: in der Gegenwart der Bewegung die Zukunft der Bewegung zu repr?sentieren [To represent in the movement of the present the future of that movement]. But above all give the movement time to consolidate; do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse confounded by forcing down people's throats things which, at present, they cannot properly understand but which they soon will learn. A million or two of working men's votes next November for a bona fide working men's party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform. The very first attempt - soon to be made if the movement progresses - to consolidate the moving masses on a national basis will bring them all face to face, Georgeites, Knights of Labor, trade unionists, and all; and if our German friends by that time have learnt enough of the language of the country to go in for a discussion, then will be the time for them to criticise the views of the others and thus, by showing up the inconsistencies of the various standpoints, to bring them gradually to understand their own actual position, the position made for them by the correlation of capital and wage labor. But anything that might delay or prevent that national consolidation of the working men's party - on no matter what platform - I should consider a great mistake, and therefore I do not think the time has arrived to speak out fully and exhaustively either with regard to Henry George or the Knights of Labor." ... Engels' insightful analyses of the American political terrain of that time period are still valuable for understanding the situation we find ourselves in today. The following extract from Engels' January 1887 Preface to the American edition of "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" is another fine example of his powers of observation (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 16): "In February 1885, American public opinion was almost unanimous on this one point; that there was no working class, in the European sense of the word, in America*; that consequently no class struggle between workmen and capitalists, such as tore European society to pieces, was possible in the American Republic; and that, therefore, Socialism was a thing of foreign importation which could never take root on American soil." {Engels then went on to enumerate fresh signs of activity in the American workers' movement in the subsequent years of 1886-7.}_______ * "An English edition of my book, which was written in 1844, was justified precisely because the industrial conditions in present-day America correspond almost exactly to those which obtained in England in the 1840s, i.e., those which I described. How much this is the case is evident from the articles on "The Labour Movement in America." by Edward and Eleanor Marx-Aveling published in the March, April, May and June Issues of Time, the London monthly. I am referring to these excellent articles with all the greater pleasure because it offers me an opportunity at the same time to reject the miserable slanderous accusations against Aveling which the Executive of the American Socialist Labor Party was unscrupulous enough to circulate." {Footnote by Engels.} In his footnote, Engels referred to an experience in which Eleanor (Tussy) Marx-Aveling accompanied her husband - Dr. Edward Aveling - and Wilhelm Liebknecht on a propaganda tour of America. They had been hired by the SLP to agitate for the Party, after which the SLP Executive Committee accused Aveling of "fabricating accounts". In his correspondence, Engels "helped Aveling to prove the absurdity and falsity of those charges"*._________ * From publisher's note #6 to "The Condition of the Working Class in England", Frederick Engels, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 336. In his same Preface, Engels described "three more or less definite forms under which the American labor movement thus presents itself" - Henry George's United Labor Party, the Knights of Labor, and the SLP (Ibid., p. 22): "The third section consists of the Socialist Labor Party. This section is a party but in name, for nowhere in America has it, up to now, been able actually to take its stand as a political party. It is, moreover, to a certain extent foreign to America, having until lately been made up almost exclusively by German immigrants, using their own language and for the most part, little conversant with the common language of the country. But if it came from a foreign stock, it came, at the same time, armed with the experience earned during long years of class struggle in Europe, and with an insight into the general conditions of working-class emancipation, far superior to that hitherto gained by American working-men. This is a fortunate circumstance for the American proletarians who thus are enabled to appropriate, and to take advantage of, the intellectual and moral fruits of the forty years' struggle of their European class-mates, and thus to hasten on the time of their own victory. For, as I said before, there cannot be any doubt that the ultimate platform of the American working class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist Labor Party. In so far this party is called upon to play a very important part in the movement. But in order to do so they will have to doff every remnant of their foreign garb. They will have to become out and out American. They cannot expect the Americans to come to them; they, the minority and the immigrants, must go to the Americans, who are the vast majority and the natives. And to do that, they must above all things learn English." Remarkably enough, Engels wrote that "the ultimate platform of the American working class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the German-American Socialist Labor Party." That old pre-SIU platform is reproduced in Appendix 2, and calls for a less bureaucratic democracy than what the republic enjoys today.ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY IN NEW YORK(MESC, p. 378) London, January 27, 1887 ... "The movement in America, just at this moment, is I believe best seen from across the Ocean. On the spot, personal bickering and local disputes must obscure much of the grandeur of it. And the only thing that could really delay its march, would be the consolidation of these differences into established sects. To some extent, that will be unavoidable, but the less of it the better. And the Germans have most to guard against this. Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is crammed into the Americans from without and the more they test it through their own experience - with the help of the Germans - the more it will become second nature with them. When we returned to Germany in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of gaining the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules in such a way that all working-class Socialists of that period could join it - Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what it was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sects, with the exception of the Anarchists, whose sudden appearance in various countries was but the effect of the violent bourgeois reaction after the Commune and could therefore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did. Had we from 1864-73 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform - where should we be today? I think all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 169-174) London, February 9, 1887 ... "As to the distorted passage from my letter which the irrepressible Eaton could not refrain from publishing, it is no use for Rosenberg and Co. to saddle Aveling with it. The passage about the hundred thousands and millions occurred in my letter {dated December 28} to you and in no other letter. So you will know who is responsible for this indiscretion and for putting this nonsense into my mouth. As far as I am concerned I have no objection to your publishing the whole passage and indeed the whole letter. "Your fear as to my being unduly influenced by Aveling in my view of the American movement is groundless. As soon as there was a national American working-class movement, independent of the Germans, my standpoint was clearly indicated by the facts of the case. That great national movement, no matter what its first form, is the real starting point of American working-class development. If the Germans join it, in order to help it or to hasten its development in the right direction, they may do a great deal of good and play a decisive part in it. If they stand aloof, they will dwindle down into a dogmatic sect and be brushed aside as people who do not understand their own principles. Mrs. Aveling, who has seen her father {Marx} at work, understood this quite as well from the beginning, and if Aveling saw it too, all the better. And all my letters to America, to Sorge, to yourself, to the Avelings, from the very beginning, have repeated this view over and over again. Still I was glad to see the Avelings before writing my preface, because they gave me some new facts about the inner mysteries of the German party in New York. "You appear to take it for granted that Aveling has behaved in America as a swindler, and not only that: you call upon me, upon the strength of assertions and allusions contained in your letter, to treat him as such and to do all in my power to have him excluded from the literary organs of the party. Now for all these assertions you cannot have any proof because you have not been able to hear any defense. Still you are better off then we here; you have at least heard one side, while we do not even know what the distinct charge is! "In the early hole-and-corner stages of the working-class movement, when the workingmen are still under the influence of traditional prejudices, woe be to the man who, being of bourgeois origin or superior education, goes into the movement and is rash enough to enter into money relations with the working-class element. There is sure to be a dispute upon the cash account, and this is at once enlarged into an attempt at exploitation. Especially so if the "bourgeois" happens to have views on theoretical or tactical points that disagree with those of the majority or even of a minority. This I have constantly seen for more than forty years. The worst of all were the Germans; in Germany the growth of the movement has long since swept that failing away, but it has not died out with the Germans outside Germany. For that reason Marx and I have always tried to avoid having any money dealings with the party, no matter in what country. "And when the Avelings went to America I had very strong misgivings on that point. Only when it was arranged that the tour should be made together with Liebknecht, I felt more at rest, because Liebknecht, as an old hand, would know how to deal with such complaints, and because any charges brought against him on that score would merely make the complainants ridiculous in Germany and in Europe generally. Well, the tour was arranged differently afterwards, and here is the result. "From this you will see that I look upon this matter a great deal cooler than what people seem to do in New York. But moreover, I have known Aveling for four years; I know that he has twice sacrificed his social and economic position to his convictions, and might be, had he refrained from doing so, a professor in an English university and a distinguished physiologist instead of an overworked journalist with a very uncertain income. I have had occasion to observe his capacities by working with him, and his character by seeing him pass through rather trying circumstances more than once, and it will take a good deal (more than mere assertions and innuendoes) before I believe what some people tell about him now in New York. "But then, had he tried to swindle the party, how could he do that during all his tour without his wife being cognizant of it? And in that case the charge includes her too. And then it becomes utterly absurd, in my eyes at least. Her I have known from a child, and for the last seventeen years she has been constantly about me. And more than that, I have inherited from Marx the obligation to stand by his children as he would have done himself, and to see, as far as lies in my power, that they are not wronged. And that I shall do, in spite of fifty Executives. The daughter of Marx swindling the working class - too rich indeed! "Then you say: "No one here imagines that Dr. Aveling put the money in his pocket, or spent it as the bills indicate. They believe that he merely tried to cover his wife's expenses." That is a distinct charge of forgery, and this you give as an extenuating charitable supposition. What then, if this be the attenuated charge, what is the full charge? And on what ground is this charge made? "The ridiculous bills which Dr. Aveling sent in." I should like to see a few of these "ridiculous" bills. For fifteen weeks they were sent every Sunday to the Executive who gave no sign of disapproval. Nor did they budge when the Avelings, Dec. 19, returned to New York. It was only on the 23rd, when they were on the point of leaving, when they could no longer defend themselves against charges, real or trumped-up, that the Executive discovered these bills, to which, singly, they had never objected, were ridiculous when added up! That is to say they object, not to the bills, but to the rules of addition. Why, then, did the Executive, instead of shortening the tour, try to extend it, and just at the close of it plan a second visit of the Avelings to Chicago, which fortunately did not come off? It strikes me that in all this it is not the bills which are ridiculous but the Executive. "Well, at the meeting of December 23d, the Avelings hear for the first time that these bills are ridiculous, and the Executive lays before them a statement of account drawn up by themselves. As soon as his statement is objected to Dr. Aveling at once accepts that of the Executive, according to which - as I have seen myself in Rosenberg's handwriting - a balance is due to him of $176.00. Then, being again bullied by Walther, he refuses that balance, returns $76.00 at once, and sends the rest from London. And then you say that "Dr. Aveling's returning the $100.00 has not helped matters at all." Why, what in the name of goodness do these people want then? Is Aveling to be treated as a swindler because the Executive appropriate $176.00 which, on their own showing, belong to him? "Then the mystery with which the Executive envelop this matter becomes darker and darker. When the article in the New York Herald appeared and was cabled across, the Avelings sent the enclosed circular to the sections, and at the same time, to the Executive. That circular - unless I take Aveling to be a liar and a swindler, which I decline doing until further conclusive evidence - is in my eyes conclusive against the Executive, at least until I see their reply. But what do the Executive do? They get infamous attacks into the Volkszeitung, they spread rumors and reports behind Aveling's back, they call meetings of the sections and lay their version before them, and get them to vote resolutions in a matter which cannot be judged without an impartial audit of the whole accounts and a full defense of the absent accused. And having, as it appears, succeeded in their New York circle to slander Aveling, not as a man who has spent their money extravagantly (for such, rightly or wrongly, might be their honest conviction), but as a swindler and forger of accounts, they rise to the level of the occasion created by their own inventive genius, and promise a circular proclaiming Aveling a swindler and forger to the working class of the whole world! And all this, mind you, behind the back of, and unknown to the man whom they charge, and who can, not only not defend himself, but not even make out the precise facts on which the charge is based! If this is the way people are to be judged in our party, then give me the Leipzig Reichsgericht [Supreme Court of Germany] and the Chicago jury. [The hand-picked jury that convicted eight militant workers of murder after the Haymarket massacre of May 4, 1886] "Fortunately we have passed that stage in the older parties in Europe. We have seen Executives rise and fall by the dozen; we know they are as fallible as any pope, and have even known more than one that lived sumptuously on the pence of the workingmen, and had swindlers and forgers of accounts in their midst. In their circular, the Executive will not only have to define their charge - which perhaps will thus at last become known to us - but also to prove it. People on this side do not take the work of their own Executives for gospel, much less that of Mr. Walther and Mr. Rosenberg, be it ever so "official". "In my opinion, the Executive have placed themselves in a very uncomfortable position. Had they grumbled at the accounts as merely extravagant, they might have secured a hearing outside their own circle, for that is more or less a matter of opinion. But having never objected to the accounts sent in, they felt they had cut the ground from under their own feet, and, as weak people do under the circumstances, exaggerated the charge in order to cover themselves. Thus they came to the fresh charge of swindling and forgery which they can never prove and must be content to insinuate. But an infamy insinuated to cover mere weakness remains neither more nor less an infamy. And having swelled what was originally a mere trifling matter of disputed accounts into a criminal offense, they actually feel bound to go before the various working-class parties with it. And naturally, they do it in a sneaking underhand way, preventing the accused from even hearing the charge. One mistaken step leads to another, and at last they arrive in a complete mess and are caught in their own net. And all that not out of inborn malice, but sheer weakness. "You will now see that I must distinctly decline following your advice as to "giving Kautsky a hint, not to let the letters appear which are advertised in the name of Aveling," because the Executive are going to launch "an official circular" against Aveling, and "his name as one of the staff can only injure any organ." Neither Kautsky nor myself has, I believe, ever given any ground for anyone to suppose that we would treat thus the friends we have worked with for years, upon the strength of mere assertions and innuendoes. And if I were to say anything of the kind to Kautsky, I should simply drive him to the conclusion that I was either falling rapidly into dotage or that I was no longer to be trusted across the road. Indeed I feel certain you regretted having written this passage as soon as the letter had gone. "I see very well that you wrote your letter in what you considered the interests of the party, and thus were led to represent to me the case of Aveling as hopeless and judged without appeal. But so far he is judged by nobody but the Executive who are themselves parties, accusers, judges, and jury all in one, for the resolution of the New York sections, whatever it may be, counts for nothing. What the other sections may say remains to be seen, but even they, if impartial, can only declare themselves incompetent until they have the full facts and until the accused has been heard. And I for one consider it utterly ruinous to the party to introduce into it, and even to outdo, the kind of justice practiced by Bismarck and the American bourgeois, who do at least respect forms and give the prisoner at the bar a hearing - and for us to act thus at the very moment we protest against these infamous proceedings. "No doubt it may suit the Executive, under the pretense of avoiding public scandal, to shirk publicity. But that will not do. Either they must retract the dishonoring charge, reduce the case to its simple dimensions of a dispute about accounts, and settle that honorably and straightforwardly, or they must come out publicly with the charge and have it fought out. There has already too much of it been allowed to leak out, and it cannot remain where it is, nor is Aveling the man to leave it there. And as I cannot allow the Avelings to be accused of infamies behind their back, it was my duty to communicate your letter to Mrs. Aveling (he being too ill at present) and to read her my reply. And if at any time circumstances should require the publication of this my letter, you are at liberty to publish it in full, while I reserve to myself the same right, of course without dragging in your name, unless the people should have done so previously."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 175) London, Feb. 12, 1887 ... "The gentlemen of the Executive of the Socialist Labor Party are behaving quite abominably towards the Avelings. After the Herald article was published through their indiscretion, if not inspiration, a quite infamous article appeared in the Volkszeitung, for which I can only hold Mr. Douai responsible for the present. The Avelings answered the Herald scandal with the enclosed circular, which was sent out from here around January 18th to all the sections as well as to the Executive. Well, on January 28th the latter had a person whom I may not name for the present, but whom you must therefore guess, write me an embarrassed letter in which it is asserted as a fact, an undisputed fact, that Aveling tried to cheat them. He sent in false accounts - so it is assumed out of Christian charity - in order to cover his wife's hotel expenses (the party paid only the railroad fare for Tussy), and returning the $176.00 does not change matters, for that isn't the point at issue at all, etc. Nothing but insinuations, not a single fact, not even a definite charge. And then it is said: they have already had the New York sections pass a resolution on the matter in order to issue a circular to all the European parties to brand Aveling. And I am called upon to warn Kautsky not to print anything more by such a blackguard as Aveling, who is to be expelled from all party organs! "You can imagine how I replied to these dirty tricks. If I can find anyone to make a copy of the letter I shall send you it - with my inflamed eye I cannot copy it for the third time. The gentlemen haven't the slightest pretext. For when Aveling first heard on December 23rd, through a letter from Rosenberg, that the Executive would object to some items in his statement of account, he answered Rosenberg at once, sending the letter by special messenger: "I cannot discuss money matters with the party, and am ready to accept anything without discussion that the National Executive of the S.L.P. thinks right!" And that was before he knew what they would say and offer him! And now these fellows go ahead, pocket $176.00, which belong to the Avelings according to their own reckoning, and declare for that very reason that Aveling, and not they themselves, is a swindler! "Now we shall have to go through with the affair. Unfortunately, however, we here know no one in New York except yourself who can be relied on, ever since the Volkszeitung, too, has behaved so vulgarly. I should be pleased if you could let us know how Schewitsch and others stand, whether or not they have already let themselves be duped by the Executive's lies. We should at least know whom to turn to in New York without bothering you. But one must marvel at the fact that the very people in New York who are indignant about the Chicago jury outdo the disgracefulness of that jury in this case and damn people without even giving them a hearing, without even telling them what the charges against them are."FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC II, p. 26) London, February 24, 1887 ... "In a day or two you will get a printed circular with Aveling's reply to the charges of the N[ew] York Executive. If this Circular has not been sent to the German club in Paris then it has not been sent to Paris at all. It is nothing but the usual complaint of Knoten against Gelehrte [louts vs. men of learning] that they lived extravagantly on the pence of the working men. Fortunately we have a good reply."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 177-8) London, March 10, 1887 "Postcard and letter of February 21 received. You guessed right. It would be useless to send a copy of the long letter, as the formulation of the complaints in the Executive's circular is considerably different and milder, and up to now all the rest is only private gossip. How the people in Europe see the thing is shown by Singer's reply to the circular sent him: "It is the old story; it's only a pity that the Avelings have to suffer for it." No doubt you have received this circular, which I sent you in four English and four German copies, as well as my letter of about a week ago. "W[ischnewetsky] is not able to translate the Manifesto. Only one man can do that, Sam Moore, and he is working on it now; I already have the first section in ms. But it should be remembered that the Manifesto, like almost all the shorter works of Marx and myself, is far too difficult for America at the present time. The workers over there are only beginning to enter the movement . . . they are still quite crude, tremendously backward theoretically, in particular, as a result of their general Anglo-Saxon and special American nature and previous training - the lever must be applied directly in practice, and for that a whole new literature is necessary. I suggested to W[ischnewetsky] some time ago that she embody the main points of Capital in popularly written independent little pamphlets. Once the people are somewhat on the right road, the Manifesto will not fail to make its impression, whereas now it would be effective only among a few. ... "The Socialist Labor Party may be what it likes*, and claim for itself the results of its predecessors' work as much as it likes, but it is the sole workers' organization in America wholly standing on our platform. It has more than 70 sections throughout the North and West, and as such, and only as such, have I recognized it. I have expressly said that it is a party only in name. And I am convinced that the gentlemen of the Executive were very much disappointed with my preface and would have preferred not to have it. For they themselves belong to the wing which I say will ruin the party if it gains the upper hand. And it seems to be aiming at that. In the local Justice Rosenberg attacks the K. of L. {Knights of Labor} because of the longshoremen's strike {involving 30,000 workers}; he may not be entirely wrong about the individual facts, but he displays a lack of insight into the course of the movement that will soon destroy the party if these people continue to rule. The very blunders of the careerist leaders of the K. of L. and their inevitable conflicts with the Central Labor Unions in the big Eastern cities must lead to a crisis within the K. of L. and bring it to a head, but the blockhead doesn't realize that." ...__________ * "Engels had received complaints regarding the comments on the Socialist Labor Party made in his preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. " {Note by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 178-80) London, March 16, 1887 "Many thanks for your letters of February 28th and March 2nd. with the enclosures, and for your many efforts. I am returning the Exec[utive]'s circular herewith, as we have it. We sent the enclosed letter to J[onas] at once in reply to the Volkszeitung article (so the pretty Jonas kept Aveling's reply for a whole month before deciding to print it). If he should not print it and you can exert any pressure upon him, it would be excellent. But his article seems to indicate a certain retreat already. "The great point in dispute regarding the objectionable items in A[veling]'s account will doubtless have been solved by our circular of February 26th. It is extraordinary that people who make a fuss about such details, which cannot be understood at all out of their context, do not say to themselves that the other side of this context must be heard before one takes it upon oneself to sit in judgment. But these expenses would also have been found in Liebk[necht]'s account if the latter had handed in his accounts at all. He said, however, that the party must bear all my expenses, and so I'll not write anything down. And they were satisfied with that. The Ex[ecutive] then says nothing about the fact that Aveling, in Boston, for instance, paid almost all the expenses, not only for L[iebknecht], but for his daughter as well, although it is set forth in the accounts and we were decent enough not to mention it in the circular. L[iebknecht] let all the wine, etc., be brought to A[veling]'s room and thus charged to A[veling]'s account during their trip. The Executive knows all that and suppresses it. But the meanest of all is that it sent out its circular over there on January 7th, but sent it to us only on February 3rd, so that it gained a whole month's unhampered headstart in its calumnies before we even learned what A[veling] was really accused of. " I do not believe without further proof that the resol[ution] has been adopted by most of the sections. The way in which the Knights of Labor are being treated is, if I am to base myself upon A[veling]'s and Tussy's reports, diametrically opposed to the views of all the sec[tions] in the West. But if that is the case, the whole "party" can bury itself alive. "It is really fortunate that you sent me the Soz[ialist]. Up to now I was able to give Kautsky or the Avelings the second copy received from the Executive, so that it had its uses. This week the fine gang no longer sent me the paper. I take that to mean that the next numbers will again contain contemptible slanders of A[veling]. We wrote to Müller in St. Paul, asking him also to print the second circular of February 26. While the Ex[ecutive] exploits secret journalism in its own way as it pleases, it apparently wants to place the onus upon A[veling] if he is the first to publish. "It seemed to us here to be a matter of course that A[veling] did not answer the New York Herald. The art[icle] was so weirdly absurd and, what is more, both of them said it wasn't customary in America to answer such farces seriously. From what I know of the Herald they would hardly have printed it either. Only after the art[icle] was reprinted here did A[veling] reply at once. But even if A[veling] had answered the Herald art[icle], how would that have helped him against the Ex[ecutive]? Thus this seems to me to be a lame excuse of Schewitsch's. In general, I am astounded at the enormous flabbiness of most of the New Yorkers that has come to light in this connection. The Ex[ecutive] disseminates lies as big as your fist and every one believes it - from Jonas to Schewitsch and to the Wischnewetzkys! The Ex[ecutive] does seem to be a great authority in New York after all." ... On Aveling's behalf, and in his name, Engels wrote the following note, dated March 16, 1887, to the editors of the New York Volkszeitung (MECW 26, pp. 617-8): "In your article concerning me in the Volkszeitung of March 2 you maintain "that Aveling is said to have submitted a bill which contained items that a labour agitator, who must know that the donations raised to finance agitation come almost entirely out of the pockets of hard-working labourers, really should not present." "Passing over all the minor points and restricting my reply to the one main point, I wish to state: "The weekly bills submitted by me to the Executive contained all my expenses, that is to say both those chargeable to the Party and others to be met by me personally. I had made it clear to the Executive in advance and in the most unambiguous way - first in a verbal agreement with the treasurer, R. Meyer, and then in several letters - that all the purely personal expenses were to be defrayed by me in return for the $366.00 ($3.00 per day) guaranteed to me by the Executive, and that I left it entirely up to the Executive to decide which items of expenditure should be passed on to the party, and which items should be charged to me personally. "I never expected - even less demanded - that any of these personal items of expenditure should be paid for "out of the pockets of hard-working labourers", and indeed none of them have been. For further information about this I refer you to my enclosed circular of February 26 to the sections, to the publication of which I can no longer object after what has occurred." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 180-1) London, April 6, 1887 "Postcard with Dietzgen clipping of March 24th and letter of the 25th received. Hepner will hardly be in a position to judge from a few isolated facts whether Aveling should have been "franker." I myself do not dare to decide it, but I merely know that in money matters Aveling is just as much of an unlucky fellow as Hepner himself. Both of them have an enviable talent for getting themselves innocently involved in differences regarding money. ... "Wilhelm [Wilhelm Liebknecht], who cloaked himself in silence at first, is suddenly all afire. Here is what he writes me on March 28th (between the two of us - please do not transmit to others the literal text, but only whatever part of the content you consider fitting): ""The New Yorkers will probably come around. I wrote them in a very sharp tone weeks ago - that under no circumstances will I allow myself to be played off against Aveling and Tussy. I categorically demanded an apology, and as I have said, I think they will submit. It is a great pity that Aveling did not write me at once when he returned" (this is an empty excuse, as I informed him of the principal charges, as far as we knew them then, as early as January 20th). "I learnt of the whole affair only through you, and the election campaign, which naturally took all of my time, was in progress then. And so much time has been lost. But everything will be straightened out. If the New Yorkers are stubborn, I shall proceed against them publicly. Tell that to Aveling and Tussy." "In general the paper takes a strong stand against the gentlemen of the Executive. Aveling has received sympathetic letters from many private sources in New York. The Am[erican] Section in Rochester declares that it continues to have confidence in him, while the German Sect[ion] in Cleveland (or Buffalo, I forget) takes his side completely. And a month ago the Ex[ecutive] - without waiting for the Sections' vote - sent all the documentary material to the auditing commission for a decision, thus again appealing to a new tribunal! Of course we wrote the commission at once, sent them documents, and demanded access to certain letters, etc. "You will have received a copy of A[veling]'s reply to the second Volkszeitung article, which is indeed even more scurrilous." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 181-2) London, April 9, 1887 "I wrote you on the 6th and received your letter on March 29th. Thanks for your efforts with regard to Jonas. I think they will bear fruit. "So the Ex[ecutive] wants to reply. That will mean a new concealment of facts. But this resolve to reply itself proves how absurd and shabby it was to try to cheat the sect[ions] into rendering judgment upon its initial allegations. First the sect[ions] are to decide. Then, even before the period agreed on has expired, the Ex[ecutive] begs the auditing commission for a verdict. And now it itself confesses that further light is required before a decision can be rendered! "In any event the gentlemen have ruined themselves. And if the Wischnewetzkys, who have behaved rather like Washragskys in the whole affair, have been constrained to call them liars, things must have reached a pretty pass. The very fact that Mrs. W[ischnewetzky] decided to show you my letter proves the dilemma the two of them are in. I was "humane" enough to judge the Ex[ecutive] to be real German louts as much as a year ago. "This pleases me in so far as I now hope to be relieved of Mrs. W[ischnewetzky]'s harassing about translations. First of all, she translates like a factory, leaving the real work to me; second, she neglected its publishing miserably, letting these louts get hold of it. We are no longer so badly off that we have to go begging with our manuscripts. And now, after I wrote an additional preface for her, things are at a standstill, evidently just because this preface is not to the taste of the Ex[ecutive]! "The A[veling]s have also received sympathetic letters and section resolutions from Springfield, Mass.; others will probably arrive in the next few days from the West." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC II, p. 33) London, April 13, 1887 ... "The N[ew] York affair is going very well. The gentlemen of the Executive Committee have made so many blunders since then that they are as good as routed. It's a very long business and very involved, but we have nothing further to hear from that quarter." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 183-4) London, April 23, 1887 "I wrote you on the 9th. Thanks for the postcard and the things you sent. The publication of my preface in the Volkszeitung in a translation made over there is effrontery twice over. First, because I want to have nothing to do with the paper so long as it behaves so scurrilously towards Aveling. And, second, because I cannot put up with any outsider's translation of my English writings into German, and especially such a translation, which is full of mistakes and misunderstands the most important points. This woman has had my preface ever since the beginning of February (sent on January 27th), and in the only letter I have received from her since then, dated March 19th (postmarked April 8th), she merely mentions the plan of a German edition, for which she asked my consent - she knew that I had no copy of it here. I wrote her at once to return the original to me so that I might translate it. There are things in it where each word must be weighed. And then she connives behind my back with Jonas and Co! "I protested at once. Let her show you my letters. This is the last straw. It is impossible for me to work with a person who continually commits such silliness. "But she'll hear from me. Her last long letter on the Aveling affair can be characterized by one word alone: filth. The endeavor of a weak person, influenced by every gust of wind, to justify herself in a wrong cause, which she herself must consider wrong. I shall answer her next week con amore [with love]. This kind of person must not think that she can bamboozle me like a baby. "Hyndman's correspondence in the Standard is pitiable and cowardly. He wants to maintain contact with {Henry} George, while the latter grows more and more set on his land fad, and therefore must suppress all that is socialist. Things are going badly with him here, too. The sensational effects have vanished and new ones can't be had every day. But without them Hyndman cannot maintain himself in his role. The Avelings, on the other hand, have begun very effective agitation in the Radical clubs of the East End, laying special emphasis on the American example of an independent labor party. And the American example is the only thing that has an effect here - besides the German elections. The cause is making good progress and - if things continue in America as they have been going - can cost the Liberals the whole East End of London in a year." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC II, p. 38) London, April 26, 1887 ... "The N[ew] Y[ork] Executive have launched in their despair another circular against Aveling saying that his statements are lies, yet making very important admissions in our favour. We shall of course reply. But the affair is practically ended, the Ex[ecutive] are themselves accused in N[ew] Y[ork] as swindlers and liars in another affair and on their trial before the N[ew] Y[ork] sections; so that whatever they have said, say or may say, loses all importance. In the meantime the Aufsichtsbeh?rde {Board of Supervision} of the American party appeals to them (to Edward and Tussy) to let the matter drop, and from very many places they receive very nice letters both from Americans and Germans. So that matter is virtually settled. "Edward and Tussy's agitation in the East End clubs is going on very favourably. The American example has its effects; it at last offers a handle to stir up the English working people."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 184-6) London, May 4, 1887 "What you write on April 28th regarding the New York louts is certainly quite true, but you must not forget that I can answer only the points that you emphasize yourself, and not those about which you say nothing. "The Manifesto has been translated, and only my accursed eyes prevent me from looking over the work. In addition, a French, an Italian, and a Danish manuscript are in my desk, waiting to be looked through! What is more, forty years ago you were Germans, with a German aptitude for theory, and that is why the Manifesto had an effect at the time, whereas, though translated into French, English, Flemish, Danish, etc., it had absolutely no effect upon the other peoples. And for the untheoretical, matter-of-fact Americans I believe simpler fare is all the more digestible since we experienced the story told in the Manifesto, while they did not. "The affair with my book has been simply bungled by Mrs. Wischn[ewetzky], who gave Miss Foster plein pouvoir [full powers], which Miss Foster then turned over to the Ex[ecutive]. I protested immediately, but it had been done already. Up to the present Mrs. Wischnewetzky has bungled everything she has handled; I shall never give her anything again. She can do what she wants, and I shall be glad if she accomplishes something; but I have enough, and let her leave me in peace in the future. I answered her last letter a week ago. "Aveling is carrying on splendid agitation in the East End of London. The American example is having an effect; the Radical clubs - to whom the Liberals owe their 12 seats out of the 69 in London - have approached [Aveling] for lectures on the American movement, and Tussy and he are actively at work. It is an immediate question of founding an English workers' party with an independent class program. If this turns out well, it will force both the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League into the background, which would be the best solution of the current squabbles. Hyndman sees that his existence is menaced, especially as he has fallen out with almost all his followers. He has therefore reprinted the Executive's charges against Aveling in Justice. This is very good, for it puts an end to the gossip behind one's back and gives Aveling a chance to discuss the matter everywhere. Let us hope that the position of the Socialist League is also cleared up at Whitsuntide; the anarchists must be expelled or we'll drop the whole mess. "The Avelings have sent you Time with their articles on America; I take it you have received it? (March, April, May numbers.) Even the Tory Standard praises them! At the present moment the Avelings are doing more than all the others here and are much more useful - and then I'm supposed to answer Mother Wischnewetzky's childish misgivings regarding the grave charge under which Dr. A[veling] will stand until he has disproved the circ[ular] of the Ex[ecutive]! The madam seems to have quite forgotten, among her gossipy German sisters, that it is not A[veling] who has to disprove, but the Ex[ecutive] that has to prove!" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 186-7) London, May 7, 1887 "I wrote you on the 4th and received yours of April 26th. Many thanks for the reports, which were doubtless written under severe physical tribulations. I can only take the passage regarding Mrs. Wischnewetzky and her regretting having written her denunciatory letter to mean that it was written with her consent to spare her a direct pater peccavi [Father, I have sinned]. I had to write her today and I told her "if that, as I must suppose, was written with her consent, I was perfectly satisfied and had no longer any reason to revert to that subject in a spirit of controversy." You see, I want to make it as easy for her as possible. But she is awkward and, besides, a luckless person of the first water. She writes me that she wants to publish my preface* in German. I have no objections, naturally. But she knows that I kept no copy, and yet she does not send me the Ms. {manuscript} so that I can translate it. Nor do I receive the book itself or even a single galley proof of the preface. Instead, the preface is turned over to the Volkszeitung for a thoroughly dull translation, containing errors, to boot, which almost lead me to conclude that she even copied my English Ms. incorrectly. Well, now she writes me that she has sent the Ms. off to me at last (not a word about the V[olks] z[eitung] trans[lation]) - but what doesn't arrive is the Ms.! "I am especially pleased to hear that Mr. Jonas has had to climb down a peg. In view of his business jealousy of the Ex[ecutive] he was the last one to have any reason for zeal in this affair on the Ex[ecutive]'s behalf; throughout this whole period he has behaved as scurrilously as possible, just because he realized that he had burned his fingers. "Our friend Liebkn[echt], too, suddenly does not want "to break with the Executive." I have put a pistol to the head of the good-hearted L[iebknecht], who doesn't want to spoil his relations with either side, and he'll come around all right. If he hadn't made fools of us in that manner, our reply to Circular II would have been finished already. But it is hardly so pressing, and it should be a crushing answer. We have won, thanks to your support and activity, without which we should be far from where we are now. It is good that we old fellows can still rely upon one another."__________ * "Engels had written the preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in English." {Note by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 187-8) London, May 7, 1887 "I have received your note of April 25th with thanks, but no preface; if I receive it per next steamer on Monday I shall send you word at once. In the meantime as I received no copy of the book as yet, will you please see that I get at least something to work upon, a proofsheet or whatever it is, as the V[olks]z [eitung] translation cannot pass under any circumstances. I shall work at the translation as fast as my inflamed eye will allow; I am only sorry you did not send me the Ms. or a proof as soon as the idea of a German edition occurred to you. "Sorge writes to me: "The Wischnewetzkys greatly regret that the dissimulations and suppressions of the Executive led them to send you that letter, and they have made all conceivable efforts to obtain justice for Aveling in the New York section." If this, as I must suppose, was written with your consent, then I am perfectly satisfied, and have no desire whatever to return to that subject in a spirit of controversy. "Nobody was more rejoiced than I when I learnt that the book was finally out of the hands of that despicable Executive and of the S.L.P. generally. Forty years' experience has shown me how useless and literally thrown away are all those publications by small cliques, that by their very mode of publication are excluded from the general book market, and thereby from literary cognizance. It was the same thing even with the party publications in Germany up to 1878; and only since the Sozialistengesetz [Anti-Socialist Law] which forced our people to organize a book trade of their own, in opposition both to the government and to the officially organized Leipzig book trade, has this been overcome. And I do not see why in America, where the movement begins with such gigantic and imposing force, the same mistakes, with the same drawbacks in their wake, should be quite unnecessarily gone through over again. The whole socialist and, in England, Chartist literature has thereby been made so extinct that even the British Museum cannot now procure copies at any price!"FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC II, pp. 42-3) London, May 21, 1887 ... "You will have seen in Justice how Hyndman has tried to bring out Edward's American bother, but has apparently got more than he expected - his retreat in this week No. is undignified enough. A 3d circular on this affair is in the printer's hands. I have had some droll correspondence with Liebk[necht] about the letter from him it will publish. In N[ew] York we are completely victorious and that is the chief point; and our final circular I hope will settle the business." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 36, p. 665) London, June 4, 1887 "No movement makes so much fruitless work as one that is still in the stage of a sect. You know that as well as I. And so this letter about English affairs." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 188-9) London, June 30, 1887 ... "I am writing to the Wischnewetzkys to phrase the footnote as follows: "to repudiate the absurd slanders which Aveling has been exposed to in consequence of his agitational tour of America." If they don't want that either, they can turn to you, and then you can, if necessary, authorize them to delete the whole footnote. For I cannot quote Aveling without saying a word about the stuff as well. "The story of Scribner's announcement of Capital looks like deliberate piracy. Thanks for the information; I shall turn it over to Sonnenschein. As far as I know, Scribner is not Sonnenschein's agent in New York. "That the men of the Ex[ecutive] believed they had purchased Liebk[necht]'s silence with the election funds was to be expected and was not unjustified. Fortunately, I had L[iebknecht] completely under my thumb as a result of his first bragging letter and made very resolute use of it when he tried to withdraw. "Hyndman continues to gossip about A[veling] here too, and has been greatly aided by A[veling]'s bashfulness in speaking about the affair. If we could only get hold of the fellow once, he would have cause to remember it, but in the meantime he himself is ruining his position more and more. He is so miserably envious that he cannot tolerate any competitor, and is living in open or concealed warfare with everyone. And A[veling] has become zealous for battle at last, and Tussy will see to it that he remains so. . . . "I am fed up with Father McGlynn, and George has turned into a real founder of a sect. Nor did I expect anything else, but this experience was hard to avoid in view of the newness of the movement. Such people must have the length of their tether, but the masses learn only from the consequences of their own mistakes." . . .FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE IN PARIS(ELC II, p. 50) London, July 15, 1887 ... "I was obliged to give a card of introduction (to Paul) to a young Dr. Conrad Schmidt of K?nigsberg, who dabbles in question sociale. He is about the greenest youth I ever saw, he was here about 3 months, seems a decent fellow, as decent fellows go nowadays, frisst keine Schuhn?gel and s?uft keine Tinte [Eats no shoe nails, and drinks no ink]. If Paul deposits him rue Richelieu, Bibliothèque nationale, he will not trouble him much. He admires Zola in whom he has discovered the "Materialistische Geschichtsanschauung." [The materialist conception of history]"ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 188-9) London, Aug. 8, 1887 . . . "The story about the Wischnewetzkys is becoming more and more entertaining.* Such an Executive would have been deposed long ago in Germany. These people must think everything is permitted them, and that the party will follow them through thick and thin as a reward for their expecting the Americans to place themselves under the command of a German group, in which the purest louts seem to be getting more and more of an upper hand. If Messrs. Germans make that the condition for their participation over there, the movement will soon stride over them. History is on the move over there at last, and I must know my Americans badly if they do not astonish us all by the vastness of their movement, but also by the gigantic nature of the mistakes they make, through which they will finally work out their way to clarity. Ahead of everyone else in practice and still in swaddling clothes in theory - that's how they are, nor can it be otherwise. But it is a land without tradition (except for the religious), which has begun with the democratic republic, and a people full of energy as no other. The course of the movement will by no means follow the classic straight line, but travel in tremendous zigzags and seem to be moving backwards at times, but that is of much less importance there than with us. Henry George was an unavoidable evil, but he will soon be obliterated, like Powderly or even McGlynn, whose popularity at the moment is quite understandable in that God-fearing country. In autumn much will be - I won't say cleared up, but more and more complicated, and the crisis will come closer. The annual elections, which force the masses to unite over and over again, are really most fortunate." . . .___________ * "In meetings of the New York Section the Wischnewetzkys had bitterly attacked the Executive for its stand in the Aveling affair, and had been expelled for so doing." {Note by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 190-2) London, September 15, 1887 "I am glad the pamphlet* sells so well. The copies I received I shall hand over to Aveling, who has just returned from the country, to be distributed partly among the socialist periodicals, partly at his East End meetings at his lectures on the American movements. I shall also try through him to get an agent for its sale and let you know the result. ... "The repudiation of the socialists by {Henry} George is in my opinion an unmerited piece of good luck which will redeem to a great extent the - unavoidable - blunder of placing George at the head of a movement he did not even understand. George as the standard-bearer of the whole working-class movement was a dupe; George as the chief of the Georgeites will soon be a thing of the past, the leader of a sect, like the thousands of other sects in America. ... "The reply of the Executive to my footnote is in itself so deprecatory and meaningless that to reply to it would be a work of supererogation. I cannot reply in time for the congress**, and the fact remains that I have openly taken sides against the Executive in this matter. A fresh controversy across the Atlantic can lead to nothing. As to the Socialist and the Volkszeitung boycotting me, I am sorry for it on account of the book and pamphlet, otherwise it is a matter of perfect indifference to me; I have got over such chicanery too often by simply waiting and looking on. "Your expulsion I read in the Volkszeitung at the time; it was what I expected. I hope your pamphlet will come in time for the congress; it would have been well if it had been out a month ago so as to come into the hands of the sections before they sent delegates. I am curious what the congress will do, but do not hope for too much. ... "Fortunately the movement in America has now got such a start that neither George, nor Powderly, nor the German intriguers can spoil or stop it. Only it will take unexpected forms. The real movement always looks different to what it ought to have done in the eyes of those who were tools in preparing it."__________ * "The preface to the American edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844." {Note by International Publishers.} ** "The national convention of the Socialist Labor Party, which met in Buffalo in September 1887." {Note by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 192-3) London, September 16, 1887 . . . "I shall be able to look for and find Marx's letter on {Henry} George only when I begin putting things in order, that is, as soon as some new bookcases I have ordered to give me more space arrive. Then you'll get a translation at once. There's no hurry - George must still compromise himself some more. His repudiation of the socialists is the greatest good fortune that could happen to us. Making him the standard-bearer last November was an unavoidable mistake for which we had to pay. For the masses are to be set in motion only along the road that fits each country and the prevailing circumstances, which is usually a roundabout road. Everything else is of subordinate importance, if only the actual arousing takes place. But the mistakes unavoidably made in doing this are paid for every time. And in this case it was to be feared that making the founder of a sect the standard-bearer would burden the movement with the follies of the sect for years to come. By expelling the founders of the movement, establishing his sect as the special, orthodox, George sect, and proclaiming his narrow-mindedness as the borne [boundary] of the whole movement, George saves the latter and ruins himself. "The movement itself will of course, still go through many and disagreeable phases, disagreeable particularly for those who live in the country and have to suffer them. But I am firmly convinced that things are now going ahead over there, and perhaps more rapidly than with us, notwithstanding the fact that the Americans, for the time being, will learn almost exclusively from practice and not so much from theory. "The reply of the New York Executive to my footnote is pitiful. Nor do I hope for much from their convention. The people in the East - the sections - do not seem to be worth much, while a shift in the center of gravity of the Social-Democratic Party to the West is rather unlikely." . . .Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 36, p. 705) London, September 16, 1887 ... "The trades-union congress here has proven again that the revolution in the old trades-unions is progressing. Against the leaders, especially against Broadhurst and the rest of the labor-parliamentarians, they have decided on the founding of a special Labor Party. An armchair-socialist Austrian delegate of the Reich Council was quite amazed at the change since 1883, when he was here last." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(pp. 196-7) London, Feb. 22, 1888 ... "I am not astonished at Gr?nlund's proceedings. I was rather glad he did not call on me here. From all I hear he is full of vanity and self-conceit. . . . Es muss auch solche K?uze geben [it takes all sorts to make a world]. In America not less than in England all these self-announced grands hommes [great men] will find their own level as soon as the masses begin to stir - and will then find themselves shifted to that level of their own with a velocity that will astonish them. We have had all that in Germany, and in France, and in the International, too. ... "Your remarks about my books being boycotted by the official German Socialists of New York are quite correct, but I am used to that sort of thing, and so the efforts of these gents amuse me. Better so than to have to undergo their patronage. With them the movement is a business, and "business is business." This kind of thing won't last very long; their efforts to boss the American movement as they have done with the German-American one must fail miserably. The masses will set all that right when once they move. ... "Home Rule for Ireland and for London is now the cry here, the latter a thing which the Liberals fear even more than the Tories do. The working-class element is getting more and more exasperated, through the stupid Tory provocations, is getting daily more conscious of its strength at the ballot-box, and more penetrated by the Socialist leaven. The American example has opened their eyes, and if next autumn there were to be a repetition, in any large American town, of the New York election campaign of 1886, the effect here would be instantaneous. The two great Anglo-Saxon nations are sure to set up competition in Socialism, as well as in other matters, and then it will be a race with ever-accelerated velocity."Engels to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis in the Hague(MEW 37, p. 31) London, February 23, 1888 ... "The best proof of how much things are progressing among the workers here comes through the workers' East End radical clubs. The example of the New York election campaign in November 1886 worked among them first; for, what America does makes more of an impression here than what the whole European continent does. The New York example makes it clear to people that, in the end, it would be best if the workers formed their own party. When the Avelings came back, they took advantage of this mood and since then have been very active in these clubs - the only political workers' organizations of importance existing here." ...ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 199) London, April 11, 1888 ... "The free trade question will not disappear from the American horizon until settled. I am sure that protection has done its duty for the United States and is now an obstacle, and whatever may be the fate of the Mills bill*, the struggle will not end until either free trade enables the United States manufacturers to take the leading part in the world market to which they are entitled in many branches of trade, or until both protectionists and free traders are shoved aside by those behind them. Economic facts are stronger than politics, especially if the politics are so much mixed up with corruption as in America. I should not wonder if during the next few years one set of American manufacturers after the other passed over to the free traders - if they understand their interests they must . ... "I am glad of your success against the Executive as far as it goes** - from Volkszeitung Weekly March 31st I see they won't give in yet - there you see what an advantage it is to be on the spot. The non-resisting weakness which went straight against the Avelings because they were absent - that weakness you could work around to your favor because you were not absent; and thus the hostility to you is reduced to mere local klatsch [gossip], which with perseverance you are sure to overcome and live down." . . .__________ * "A tariff bill before Congress at the time." ** "Mrs. Wischnewetzky had attacked the Executive Committee of the S.L.P. for its careless publication of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. For this she was expelled from the party, but reinstated in August, 1888." {2 notes by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO MRS. [FLORENCE KELLEY] WISCHNEWETZKY(p. 200) London, May 2, 1888 ... "I am boycotted here almost as much as you are in New York - the various socialist cliques here are dissatisfied at my absolute neutrality with regard to them, and being all of them agreed as to that point, try to pay me out by not mentioning any of my writings. Neither Our Corner (Mrs. Besant) nor To-day nor the Christian Socialist (of this latter monthly, however, I am not quite certain) has mentioned the Condition of the Working Class though I sent them copies myself. I fully expected this but did not like to say so to you until the proof was there. I don't blame them, because I have seriously offended them by saying that so far there is no real working-class movement here, and that, as soon as that comes, all the great men and women who now make themselves busy as officers of an army without soldiers will soon find their level, and a rather lower one than they expect. But if they think their needle-pricks can pierce my old well-tanned and pachydermatous skin, they are mistaken." In 1888, Engels visited America, and traveled a bit in New England, New York, and Canada, mostly for the benefit of his health. He scrupulously tried to avoid the New York Socialist scene until the very end.ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 200-1) London, July 11, 1888 "In all haste, information which you must, however, keep absolutely secret. You must not be surprised if you see me over there around the middle of August or a few days later - I shall perhaps make a short pleasure trip across the ocean. Be so good as to tell me at once where you live so that I can look you up, and in case you shouldn't be there at that time, where I can find you. Also whether the Wischnewetzkys will be in New York around that time. I shall see nobody else upon my arrival, for I do not want to fall into the hands of the Messrs. German Socialists - that is why the thing must be kept secret. If I come, I shall not come alone - with the Avelings who have business to transact over there. More soon."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 201) London, July 11, 1888 ... "I expect that little Cuno will be lying in wait for me, but I think I have a magic spell to make him tractable. When I return, shortly before we sail, I shall have to see various people at the Volkszeitung. That can't be avoided, nor does it do any harm, but at the beginning I want a rest." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC II, p. 151) London, August 6, 1888 "When you receive this letter I shall be floating away on the "City of Berlin", with Tussy, Edward, and Schorlemmer towards the shores of the New World. The plan has been of pretty long standing, only it was constantly being crossed by all sorts of obstacles . . . . The affair had to be kept secret, first because indeed of the series of obstacles which threatened to wreck it, and secondly in order to save me as much as possible from the interviewers of the N[ew] Y[ork] Volkszeitung and others (among whom, as Sorge writes, little Cuno is now one of the most formidable) and from the delicate attention of the German Socialist Executive, etc. of N[ew] York, on arrival, as that would spoil all the pleasure of the trip and rend all its purpose. I want to see and not to preach, and principally to have a complete change of air, etc., in order to get finally over the weakness of the eyes" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 202) London, August 28, 1888 "Arrived here yesterday morning ... This Boston is badly scattered, but more human than New York City. Cambridge, in fact, is very pretty, quite Continental European in appearance." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 202-3) Boston, Aug. 31, 1888 ... "Yesterday we were in Concord, visiting the reformatory and the town. We liked both of them very much. A prison in which the prisoners read novels and scientific books, establish clubs, assemble and discuss without warders present, eat meat and fish twice daily with bread ad libitum [at will], with ice water in every workroom and fresh running water in every cell, the cells decorated with pictures, etc., where the inmates, dressed like ordinary workers, look one straight in the eye without the hangdog look of the usual criminal prisoner - that isn't to be seen in all Europe; for that the Europeans, as I told the superintendent, are not bold enough. And he answered in true American fashion, "Well, we try to make it pay, and it does pay." I gained great respect for the Americans there. "Concord is exceedingly beautiful, graceful, as one wouldn't have expected after New York and even after Boston, but it's a splendid hamlet to be buried in, but not alive! Four weeks there, and I should perish or go crazy. "My nephew Willie Burns is a splendid fellow, clever, energetic, in the movement body and soul. He is getting along well; he works on the Boston and Providence R.R. (now the Old Colony), earns $12.00 a week, and has a nice wife (brought along from Manchester), and three children. He wouldn't go back to England for any money; he is exactly the youngster for a country like America. "Rosenberg's resignation and the strange debate on the Sozialist in the Volkszeitung seem to be symptoms of collapse."*______________ * "The collapse (of the Socialist Labor Party) came one year later."... {Note by International Publishers.}Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 90) Niagara Falls, N.Y. September 4, 1888 "The fact that Jonas has found me out is one more reason to postpone the return to New York as long as possible. However, even if now he sends me his Cuno I don't mind, I am finished with the trip and he can bother me at most for half an hour."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 203-4) Montreal, September 10, 1888 ... "The St. Lawrence and the rapids are very pretty. Canada is richer in ruined houses than any other country but Ireland. We are trying to understand the Canadian French here - that language beats Yankee English holler. ... "It is a strange transition from the States to Canada. First one imagines that one is in Europe again, and then one thinks one is in a positively retrogressing and decaying country. Here one sees how necessary the feverish speculative spirit of the Americans is for the rapid development of a new country (presupposing capitalist production as a basis); and in ten years this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation - the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half-annexed already socially - hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern. And they may tug and resist as much as they like; the economic necessity of an infusion of Yankee blood will have its way and abolish this ridiculous boundary line - and when the time comes, John Bull will say "Yea and Amen" to it."Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin(MEW 37, p. 103) London, October 8, 1888 ... "America has interested me very much; one really has to have seen this country with one's own eyes, a country whose history goes back no further than commodity production and is the promised land of capitalist production. Our ordinary conceptions of it are as wrong as those of a German schoolboy of France." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 207) London, October 10, 1888 ... "So Jonas has extricated himself from the trap very cleverly and fabricated an interview in a way that I cannot easily repudiate.* "Mother Wischnewetzky is furious because I "was in New York for ten days and did not find the time to undertake the two hours' easy railway journey to her; she had so much to talk over with me." Well if I hadn't caught cold and weren't plagued with indigestion, and if I had been in New York for ten days on end at all!"______________ * "This refers to an article in the New York Volkszeitung on Engels' visit to the United States." {Note by International Publishers. The article was very short and contained nothing pertinent to America.}FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC II, p. 165) London, November 28, 1888 ... "Let us hope that the unconscious logic of French history will overcome the conscious breaches of logic committed by all parties - but then one must not forget that the form of all unconscious developments is the Negation der [of the] Negation, the movement by contrasts, and that this in France means republicanism (or respectively socialism) and Bonapartism (or Boulangism), and Boulanger's avènement [Accession] would be a European war - the very thing most to be feared."Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Zurich(MEW 37, p. 133) London, January 11, 1889 ..."You won't have any other choice now but to become a writer, and for that Berlin is, of course, the best place in the Reich. I am glad that you don't talk any more (in your 2nd letter) of your American plans. You would have experienced a great disappointment over there. That, under the rule of the Emergency Law, one finds the German-American Socialist press to be a good one, I understand, especially from the point of view of a journalist. In reality it doesn't amount to much, either from the theoretical, or from the local American point of view. The best is the "Philadelphia Tageblatt"; Well-meaning but weak the "St. Louis Tageblatt"; managed well as a business but precisely mainly as a business, the "New Yorker Volkszeitung". Very bad the "Sozialist", (N.Y.), official organ of the German party. For theoretical brains there is for the time being little room in America. The Germans insist - at least in their official organization - on remaining a branch of the German party, and look down with Lassallean arrogance on the "ignorant" Americans, demand that the latter join their German party, that is, put themselves under German leadership; in short, they behave with sectarian narrowness and pettiness. In the interior it is better, but the New Yorkers still remain on top. The "Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung" (now edited by Christensen), I see only rarely. In short, in America one can be effective only in the daily press, and one has to have been there for at least a year in order to acquire the necessary knowledge of people and the necessary self-assurance; furthermore, one has to submit to the public opinion there, which often is the more narrow-minded because the boorishness eliminated in Germany by big industry still finds representatives among the Germans there. (That is the strange thing about America; that, beside the newest and the most revolutionary, the most ancient and outmoded drags on). In a few years it probably can and will be better, but, whoever wants to help with the development of the scientific side finds here in Europe a much better prepared public." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 209) London, January 12, 1889 ... "Mother Wischnewetzky is very much hurt because I did not visit her in Long Branch instead of getting well in your home and putting myself in shape for the trip. She seems to be hurt by a breach of etiquette and lack of gallantry towards ladies. But I do not allow the little women's rights ladies to demand gallantry from us; if they want men's rights, they should also let themselves be treated as men. She will doubtless calm down." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE At LE PERREUX(ELC II, pp. 194-5) London, February 4, 1889 ... "Well, I hope the new paper will come out; we must take the situation as it is and make the best of it. When Paul gets to work at a paper again, he will brace himself up for the fight and no longer say despondently: il n'y a pas à aller contre le courant [There's no going against the current]. Nobody asks of him to stop the current, but if we are not to go against the popular current of momentary tomfoolery, what in the name of the devil is our business? The inhabitants of the Ville Lumière have proved to evidence that they are 2 millions, "mostly fools," as Carlyle says, but that is no reason why we should be fools too. Let the Parisians turn reactionists if they cannot be happy otherwise - the social revolution will go on in spite of them, and when it's done they can cry out: Ah tiens! c'est fait - et sans nous - qui l'aurait imaginé! [Bless my soul, it's happened-and without us - who would have thought it!]"ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 210-11) London, February 23, 1889 "Postcard of January 19th and letter of February 10th received. I get the Labor Standard [published by J. P. McDonnell in Paterson, N.J.] and am giving Wischnewetzky's articles to Tussy, who will use them if a new edition of the Labor Movement is issued. They contain material that is characteristic of America. Such neglect of safety measures against fire and the like would simply not pay in Europe. But over there it is like the railways and everything else: if they only exist, no matter how, it suffices. ... "I shall write Kautsky what you say about Rappap[ort]: lack of material and the desire for comprehensiveness brings many a person in who doesn't belong there. [in the columns of Die Neue Zeit]" ... Many of Engels' letters to Sorge during the spring and summer of 1889 focused on a European labor congress in which many of the same forces that had clashed during the last days of the First International clashed again with renewed vigor. The March 30 and April 6 editions of "Der Sozialdemokrat" of 1889 published Engels' "An Answer to Justice", dealing with controversial information about German Social-Democrats in Great Britain and America that appeared in Hyndman's journal of the Social-Democratic party in England. A portion of Engels' article dealt with the record of the Germans in America and the rest of the world (MEW 21, pp. 513-4): ... "the Socialist Labor Party of America, although originally only, and still even today consisting mostly of Germans, has numerous non-German sections: Anglo-American, Slavic, Scandinavian, etc., besides many German newspapers which are either completely, or partly, identical, the party publishes an English periodical, the "Workmen's Advocate" and covers its still considerable deficit (see the New Yorker "Sozialist" of March 2, 1889, Report of the National-Executive), provides out of their own funds the cost for an agitator for the Anglo-American workers - Professor Garside - and in America has to let itself be reproached for being only a bunch of foreign intruders who are interfering in American affairs which are none of their business and which they do not understand. And that is said of them quite regardless of the fact that the German-Americans are either American citizens or are planning to become citizens and to remain in America. If the Germans in England, almost all of whom are here only temporarily, would follow the instructions given to them by "Justice", i.e. publish English papers for English readers, participate in public agitation among Englishmen, interfere in English politics, fulfill all duties of Englishmen and demand all rights of Englishmen, the same reproach would be hurled at them and, among others, possibly also by "Justice". "With regard to the assertion that the German-Americans "are forced to learn English", I can only say I wish it were so. Unfortunately, however, this is not so at all. "But wherever there have been German Socialists, they can claim to have collaborated as far as they were able, actively and successfully, with socialist agitation. Neither in America nor in Switzerland nor in Eastern and Northern Europe would Social Democracy occupy its present position had it not benefited from the activities of the Germans living in these countries. They were everywhere and always the first to establish communication between the Socialists of the various nations, and the German Arbeiterbildungsverein [Workers' Education Society] was, if we go back to 1840, the first international socialist society. If these facts are unknown to "Justice", the international police and international capital know them very well. Wherever foreign socialists are being molested, persecuted and expelled by continental police, in three of four cases they were Germans, and the law to prevent immigration of foreign socialists pending now before the American Congress is directed mainly against Germans."Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Borsdorf bei Leipzig(MEW 37, p. 258) Eastbourne, August 17, 1889 ... "You should have realized by now that it happens to you very frequently that you are not at home when one wants to take you by your word, or one wants something from you which should be a matter of course. How was it with the Aveling affair in America? At the beginning, under the immediate impression of the mean trick played by the New York Executive, you wrote; "The New Yorkers owe Aveling an apology, I will demand it from them, and if they dig their heels in, I will stand up publicly against them." But later, when the time came to make good on your promise, things looked quite different: You wrote a statement which was neither fish nor flesh, didn't do Aveling any good nor the New Yorkers any harm - unforeseen circumstances! And only gentle pressure from me brought forth from you a statement which contained at least part of what you promised." ...Engels to Hermann Engels in Engelskirchen(MEW 37, pp. 262-3) Eastbourne, August 22, 1889 ... "in England, big industry has ruined the crafts, but has not known what to replace them with. The Germans have not had the sole privilege of furnishing bad merchandise for good money; the Londoners can do that brilliantly. That's really different in America. I think for ordinary, everyday business, where speculation doesn't play any role, America is the most solid country in the world, the only one where one still gets "good work"." ...Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 37, p. 275) London, September 15, 1889 ... "In Denmark, the old party leadership badly disgraced themselves in the Congress affair, and the opposition, Trier, Petersen, etc. are winning ground strongly. You should engage Trier as a correspondent for the "Arbeiterzeitung"" ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 276) London, September 26, 1889 "Thanks for the "Volkszeitung", etc. The revolution in the glass of water that happened over there is very funny. Possibly the start of something better to come. The nemesis marches slowly but surely; it is part of the irony of history that the same people who always relied on the New Yorkers to be against the mass of the party, especially the Westerners, are being toppled precisely by the New Yorkers."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 219) London, Oct. 12, 1889 ... "The New Yorker revolution is growing funnier and funnier - the efforts of Rosenberg and Co. to stay at the top à tout prix [at any price] are amusing but, fortunately, useless too. Your correspondence with the Nationalists* in the W.A. [Workmen's Advocate] pleased me, first because one recognized old Sorge ten miles away, and second because it is a public sign of life again from you." . . .__________ * "Sorge was then engaged in a controversy with Daniel De Leon in the columns of the Nationalist organ." {From a note by International Publishers. But, the W.A. was really an SLP organ. The debate is reproduced in Appendix 2. - K.E.}ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 220) London, Dec. 7, 1889 . . . "Things won't turn out that well: to have the "Socialist Labor Party" liquidated. Rosenberg has a lot of other heirs beside Schewitsch, and the conceited doctrinaire Germans over there certainly have no desire to give up their usurped position of teachers to the "immature" Americans. Otherwise they would be nothing at all. "Over here it is being proved that a great nation simply cannot be tutored in a doctrinaire and dogmatic fashion, even if one has the best of theories, evolved out of their own conditions of life, and even if the tutors are relatively better than the S.L.P."Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 321) London, Dec. 7, 1889 ... "Rappaport has been sent to Kautsky. If one has such an atrocious name, one has to be capable of any idiocy. "Little Hepner is such a clever little man, so impartial in his own eyes and at the same time so impractical (what the Jews call Schlemiel - a born loser) that I wonder how he has not come to grief over there long ago. It's a pity about the little guy, but that can't be helped." ...ENGELS TO HERMANN SCHL?TER IN NEW YORK(MESC, p. 389) London, Jan. 11, 1890 ... "The fact that you have got rid of Rosenberg and Co. is the main point about the revolution in your American socialist tea-pot. The German party over there must be smashed up as such, it is the worst obstacle. The American workers are coming along already, but just like the English they go their own way. One cannot at the outset cram theory into them, but their own experience and their own blunders and the evil consequences of them will soon bump their noses up against theory - and then it will be all right. Independent nations go their own way, and of them all the English and their offspring are surely the most independent. Their insular stiff-necked obstinacy is often enough annoying, but it also guarantees that what is begun will be carried out once a thing has been set going."Engels to August Bebel in Berlin London, January 23, 1890(MEW 37, p. 351) "From America you will hardly get much money. That is au fond {basically} good. A real American party is for you and the world much more useful than the few pennies you would get, precisely because that so-called party is not a party but a sect and, moreover, a purely German sect, a branch, on foreign soil, of the German party, specifically of its out-dated Lassalle elements. But now the Rosenberg clique has been defeated and thereby the greatest obstacle for the development of and absorption into a real American party has been eliminated."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 224-6) London, Feb. 8, 1890 ... "In my opinion, we hardly lose anything worth mentioning by the defection of the official Socialists over there to the Nationalists. If the whole German Socialist Labor Party went to pieces as a result, it would be a gain, but we can hardly expect anything as good as that. The really useful elements will finally come together again all the same, and the sooner the dross has separated itself, the sooner this will happen; when the moment comes at which events themselves drive the American proletariat farther on, there will be enough of them fitted by their superior theoretical insight and experience to take over the role of leaders, and then you will find that your years of work have not been for nothing. ... ..."The Schleswig-Holsteiners and their descendants in England and America are not to be converted by lecturing; this pigheaded and conceited lot must experience it in their own persons. And this they are doing more and more from year to year, but they are most conservative - just because America is so purely bourgeois, has no feudal past at all, and is therefore proud of its purely bourgeois organization - and so they will get rid of the old traditional mental rubbish only through practical experience. Hence it must begin with the trade unions, etc., if it is to be a mass movement, and every further step must be forced upon them by a setback. But once the first step beyond the bourgeois point of view has been taken, things will move quickly, like everything in America, where the velocity of the movement, growing with natural necessity, is setting some requisite fire underneath the Schleswig-Holstein Anglo-Saxons, ordinarily so slow; and then, too, the foreign elements in the nation will assert themselves by greater mobility. I consider the decay of the specifically German party, with its ridiculous theoretical confusion, its corresponding arrogance, and its Lassalleanism, a real piece of good fortune. Only when these separatists are out of the way, will the fruits of your work come to light again. The {Anti-}Socialist Law was a misfortune, not for Germany, but for America, to which it consigned the last of the louts. When I was over there, I often marveled at the many loutish faces one encountered, faces which died out in Germany, but are flourishing over there. ... "We have our Nationalists here too: the Fabians, a well-meaning lot of "eddicated" bourgeois, who have refuted Marx with the rotten vulgarized economics of Jevons, which is so vulgarized that one can make anything out of it, even socialism. As over there, their chief aim is to convert the bourgeois to socialism and thus introduce the thing peacefully and constitutionally. They have published a bulky book* about it, written by seven authors."__________ * "Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by George Bernard Shaw, London, 1889." {Note by International Publishers.}ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 227-8) London, April 12, 1890 "The matter of Miquel's letters* involves great difficulties. "Wilhelm" [Wilhelm Liebknecht] also would have liked to have them, in order to blurt them out at an inopportune time, thus permanently spoiling our means of exerting pressure on Miquel. For once the scandal is over, Miquel will snap his fingers at us. But it is of much greater value to me to have the fellow somewhat under the thumb through this means of pressure than to make a useless clamor, as a result of which he would be released and would be glad, to boot, that he had weathered it. What is more, the whole world knows that he was a member of the {Communist} League. "I have had altogether too brilliant experiences with American journalism to bite at this chance. If it became known at the Volkszeitung that these letters were in America, those sensationalists would not rest until they had them - and I don't want to expose anyone to this temptation and torture. Moreover, what guarantee have I how long Schlüter remains with the Volkszeitung and whether they don't make the release of these letters the condition for his staying? "In short, it is impossible for me to enter this deal. ...__________ * "Engels had been requested to send Johannes Miquel's letters to Marx to America for publication when the opportunity should present itself." {Note by International Publishers.} The publication of Bellamy's book Looking Backward gave birth to the Nationalist movement. The next letter assessed both the movement and its journal - The Nationalist - with which De Leon was associated before moving on to the SLP:ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 229-31) London, April 19,1890 "I get the Nationalist regularly; unfortunately there is not much in it. They are a feeble imitation of the Fabians here. Superficial and shallow as the Dismal Swamp, but full of conceit regarding the lofty generosity with which they, the "eddicated" bourgeois, condescend to emancipate the workers, in return for which the latter must politely keep quiet and must submissively obey the orders of the "eddicated" cranks and their isms. Let them have their brief pleasures; one fine day the movement will wipe all that out. An advantage we continentals have, who have felt the influence of the French Revolution in an altogether different fashion, is that such a thing isn't possible here. ... "The foregoing details concerning persons and momentary dissensions are solely for your information, of course, and must not get into the Volkszeitung at any cost. This once for all - for I have already had instances here of the fact that Schlüter sometimes takes things a bit too lightly in this respect." ...Engels to Hermann Schlüter in New York(MEW 37, p. 416) London, June 14, 1890 ... "So far, everything is all right here in Germany, too. Wilhelmchen {the German Kaiser} threatens with elimination of universal suffrage - nothing better could happen to us! We are drifting fast enough anyway either into world war or world revolution - or both."Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 37, p. 433) London, August 5, 1890 ... "Sorge ... is the best man for you. I want to write to him about it, too. Of course, you have to pay him exceptionally well - or else he prefers to give music lessons. Also, it will be difficult to make him report regularly, and it is better that way. Sometimes months can pass when nothing decisive is happening, and sometimes he might have to report on something critical every week." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 449) London, August 27, 1890 "Who is now the editor-in-chief of the "Volkszeitung"? Tussy met Schewitsch in London at a meeting, he told her that he heard in New York that I talked very maliciously about him. But this is definitely a lie. Should that come from A. Jonas?"Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 476) London, September 27, 1890 ... "Concerning Schewitsch your news is probably correct.* When he passed through here he fell into Tussy's hands at a meeting and told her that he had heard that I had expressed myself in a malicious way against him; therefore he preferred not to visit me. I attributed this to Jonas - it may also have been the subterfuge of a bad conscience. It's the old story of so many Russians: une jeunesse orageuse et une vieillesse blasée [a tumultuous youth and a blasé old age], as one of them called it."... * (MEW 37, Note #469, p. 603): "In two letters to Engels, both dated Sept. 10, 1890, F. A. Sorge wrote about the fact that Sergei Schewitsch had begged the tsar for clemency and had been given a position in Riga. This news was supposedly confirmed through a letter from Schewitsch in which he asked that his possessions be sent to him at an inn in Riga where he wanted to stay."Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 37, p. 506) London, November 26, 1890 ... "Your debut in the "Neue Zeit" is very good, do continue in this manner. You will soon get back into writing. (The remuneration is approximately double of what contributors get here (5 Marks per page); when you get into it again and work faster you won't find that so low. What Schlüter told you I would like to have better verified. That I and others get 5 Marks per page in the "Neue Zeit", and that that is the usual fee, is certain. I myself have written to Kautsky that you should be offered more. Schlüter sometimes blabbers out things without thinking. Of course, in American terms, $2 per page is very little, and if you find that you must ask American prices, you are quite right to do it. But Kautsky, who surely does everything for you, must also take into account Dietz, who is the treasurer, and I do not wish that the door to the "Neue Zeit" should be opened, because of such considerations, to someone of the "Volkszeitung" or the "Sozialist". Think again about this matter, and if you insist on additional payment write me, and I will appeal to Kautsky on this; that will then leave all doors open. "The boycott against me* had already been declared by Rosenberg and Co., and if now the Nationalists fall in with them, it serves me right. Why don't I desist then from the class struggle! Marx and I had the same experience here with the Fabians who also want to bring about the liberation of the workers through the "Jebildeten"." {educated} * (MEW 37, Note #493, p. 606): "Friedrich Adolph Sorge on Oct. 14, 1890, had written the following to Engels: "The Messrs. Nationalists have proclaimed a boycott against you. I heard about it already last summer and found, however, upon closer inspection that, in their announcements and book reviews, your writings were never mentioned, your name was never said. Professor De Leon, whose name is probably known to you (the same with whom last year I had a correspondence which I published) is said to have stated that your writings are harmful to the movement (the Nationalist movement, of course). The man speaks frequently now from the tribunes of the New York Socialists and is considered a great figure. But the best thing was that the conceited Kantist L. Daniel, editor of the 'Workmen's Advocate' (a Frenchman by birth) extended this boycott to the 'Workmen's Advocate' and co-workers had to force him, through threats, to give up the boycott.""ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 233) London, Jan. 29, 1891 ... "I see clearly enough that things are going downhill with the S.L.P. from its fraternization with the Nationalists*, compared to whom the Fabians here - likewise bourgeois - are radicals. I should have thought that the Sozialist would scarcely be able to beget extra boredom by cohabiting with the Nationalist. Sorge sends me the Nationalist, but despite all my efforts I cannot find anyone who is willing to read it. "Nor do I understand the quarrel with Gompers**. His Federation is, as far as I know, an association of trade unions and nothing but trade unions. Hence they have the formal right to reject anyone coming as the representative of a labor organization that is not a trade union, or to reject delegates of an association to which such organizations are admitted. I cannot judge from here, of course, whether it was propagandistically advisable to expose oneself to such a rejection. But it was beyond question that it had to come, and I, for one, cannot blame Gompers for it. "But when I think of next year's international congress*** in Brussels, I should have thought it would have been well to keep on good terms with Gompers, who has more workers behind him, at any rate, than the S.L.P., and to ensure as big a delegation from America as possible there, including his people. They would see many things there that would disconcert them in their narrow-minded trade-union standpoint - and besides, where do you want to find a recruiting ground if not in the trade unions?"___________ * "The National Citizens Alliance, a short-lived middle-class political group, collaborating with the Knights of Labor for the formation of a third political party. ** "The A.F. of L. had refused a charter to the New York Central Labor Federation on the ground that a section of the SLP was affiliated to it. *** "The second congress of the Second International was held in Brussels, August 16-22, 1891." {3 Notes by International Publishers.}Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 30) London, February 11, 1891 ... "I am very glad that you want to do away with the "Nationalist". Here I can find no one, but absolutely no one, who wants to read it, and I myself have no time to scrutinize the pieces of wisdom of the various respectable upstarts. I would have proposed this to you a long time ago, but I thought: since Sorge sends me this, at last there must be something to it, for once." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 46) London, March 4, 1891 ... "Hyndman is once again bubbling over against me, that happens every 6 months, but he can stand on his head and march all around London on his head, I won't answer him. He is also pitching in again against Aveling, and mentions also the American affair. Do you think that, now that Rosenberg has been thrown out, a satisfactory declaration can be obtained from the American party? I am only asking your opinion, I am not authorized to demand that any steps be taken." ...Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 38, p. 88) London, April 30, 1891 ... "The American militia system is practically nothing but a kind of voluntary national guard of bourgeois, and Hyndman wrote 10 years ago from America already to Marx that there the bourgeois are drilling extensively in order to protect themselves from the workers. How absolutely useless it is against exterior enemies is shown in all wars conducted by the United States with newly formed regiments of volunteers (recruited) and especially in the Civil War. There the militia disappeared completely. Already in America I have heard of the armories of the militia regiments in the interior of New York as being real fortresses. As long as every worker does not have his repeater-rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition in his house, everything is nonsense."FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 58) London, May 4, 1891 ... "They {Hyndman's SDF in England} have been made to feel their real position, and that is: the same position which the Germans in the Socialistic Labour Party in America hold there, that of a sect. And that is their position, though they are real live Englishmen. It is very characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race and their peculiar mode of development, that both here and in America the people who, more or less, have the correct theory as to the dogmatic side of it, become a mere sect because they cannot conceive that living theory of action, of working with the working class at every possible stage of its development, otherwise than as a collection of dogmas to be learnt by heart and recited like a conjurer's formula or a Catholic prayer. Thus the real movement is going on outside the sect, and leaving it more and more." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 112) London, June 10, 1891 ..."Thanks for the American pirate edition {of "Capital"}. Schlüter wrote me strange things about it. Please thank him for his detailed letter, I am sorry I can't answer it now."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 234) London, June 10, 1891 ..."The movement here is getting along very well. The Gas Workers and General Laborers Union is taking first place here more and more, thanks to Tussy especially. The movement is proceeding in an English fashion - systematically, step by step, but surely - and the comical phenomenon that here, as in America, the people who claim to be the orthodox Marxists, who have transformed our concept of movement into a rigid dogma to be learned by heart, appear as a pure sect, is very significant. What is more, that over there these people are foreigners, Germans, while over here they are true-blue Englishmen, Hyndman and his set." . . .ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 234) Ryde, Isle of Wight, Aug. 9-11, 1891 . . . "I am very grateful for the information regarding the Journal of the Knights of Labor - I have to look through such a pile of papers that it is often very hard for me to get my bearings without such reports. Likewise, regarding Gompers and Sanial*; very important, should I see them in London?" ...___________ * "Sorge had informed Engels in a letter dated July 14, 1891, of the enmity between Sanial (delegate of the Socialist Labor Party to the Brussels Congress of the Second International) and Gompers (delegate of the American Federation of Labor). Sorge had expressed the fear that Gompers would exploit this feud at the congress for his own political ends." {Note by International Publishers.}Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 155) Helensburgh, Scotland, Sept. 14, 1891 ... "Among the American delegates I saw Mac-Vey and Abraham Cahan, the Jewish apostle; I liked them both. "The Congress is, after all, a splendid victory for us - the Broussists stayed away completely, and the Hyndman people have put away their opposition. And the best thing is that they have thrown out the Anarchists, just like at the Hague Congress {of 1872}. Where the old International broke off, just there the new, much bigger and declared Marxist one is beginning again."Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 166) London, September 30, 1891 ... ""The "People" is unreadable. Such a silly collection of junk in a newspaper I haven't seen for a long time. Who is the translator of my "Entwicklung"*? Jonas? * (MEW 38, Note #238, p. 610): "The Socialist Labor Party of North America had, in 1891, without Engels' knowledge, published his paper "Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissensschaft" {"The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science"} in the weekly "The People". As can be seen from Friedrich Adolph Sorge's letters to Engels of October 9 and 12, 1891, Engels' paper was translated by De Leon and H. Vogt, (obviously from the German edition of 1883); it was also to be published as a pamphlet."ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE IN HOBOKEN(MESC, p. 411) London, Oct. 24, 1891 ... "Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus [Socialism: Utopian and Scientific] will be published here in a translation prepared by Aveling and edited by me (in Sonnenshein's Social Series). In face of this authorised translation the American pirate edition* with its miserable English will be rather innocuous. It is moreover not even complete, whatever they found too difficult they have left out." . . .__________ * "Engels refers to a translation by De Leon and Vogt which was published by the Socialist Workers' Party of America." {Note by Progress Publishers. It should have read: "Socialist Labor Party". The SWP was organized decades later.-K.E.}ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 236-7) London, October 24, 1891 . . . "For heaven's sake do me the favor of not sending me any American monthly regularly. I long for the opportunity of reading a book once again; though I am able to look through properly only one-third of the papers sent me, they take all my time - but the movement is gigantic by now and one must remain au courant [well-informed]! ... "I can very well believe that the movement over there is ebbing again. Over there everything proceeds with great ups and downs. But every up wins ground conclusively, and so one advances after all. Thus the tremendous strike wave of the Knights of Labor and the 1886-1888 strike movement has put us ahead despite all the recoils. For there is an altogether different life in the masses than before. The next time even more ground will be won. But with all that the native American workingman's standard of living is considerably higher than even that of the British, and that alone suffices to place him in the rear for still some time to come. Then there is the competition of immigration and other things. When the time comes, things will go ahead over there tremendously fast and energetically, but it may take some time until then. Miracles happen nowhere. And then there is the misfortune of the arrogant Germans, who want to play the schoolmaster and commander in one, and make the natives dislike learning even the best things from them" . . .Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg(MEW 38, p. 195) London, October 29, 1891 ... "The "breeding of millionaires", as Bismarck says, seems to really advance in your country with giant steps. Such profits as shown in your official statistics are unknown today in English, French or German textile factories. 10, 15, at most 20% average profit and 25-30% in exceptional years of especial prosperity are considered good. Only in the infancy of modern industry could enterprises with the newest and best machinery which produced their goods with considerably less labor than socially necessary at that time secure for themselves such profit rates. At this time, such profits are made only by successful speculative enterprises with new inventions, that is, by one out of 100 enterprises; the rest are usually complete failures. "The only country today, where similar or almost similar profits in some main industries are possible, is the United States of America. There the protective tariffs after the Civil War, and now the MacKinley-Tariff, have led to similar consequences, and the profits must be enormous, which they are. The fact that this depends completely on tariff legislation which can be changed from one day to the next, is sufficient to prevent any great investment of foreign capital (great in relation to the mass of invested domestic capital) in these industries, and thus to stop up the main source of the competition and the lowering of profits."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 239-40) London, Jan. 6, 1892 ... "There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big industry forms the core of the Republicans on the whole, just as the big landowners of the South form that of the Democrats. The apparent haphazardness of this jumbling together is what provides the splendid soil for the corruption and the plundering of the government that flourish there so beautifully. Only when the land - the public lands - is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls victim to gouging - only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more, will we have a solid foothold in America! But, of course, who can count on peaceful development in America! There are economic jumps over there, like the political ones in France - to be sure, they produce the same momentary retrogressions. "The small farmer and the petty bourgeois will hardly ever succeed in forming a strong party; they consist of elements that change too rapidly - the farmer is often a migratory farmer, farming two, three, and four farms in succession in different states and territories, immigration and bankruptcy promote the change in personnel in each group, and economic dependence upon the creditor also hampers independence - but to make up for it they are a splendid element for politicians, who speculate on their discontent in order to sell them out to one of the big parties afterward. "The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory. They are punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit. "Louise {Kautsky} asks you to send her only the Woman's Journal (Boston) and even this only until March 31st, unless we do not write otherwise before then. She needed it for the Vienna Arbeiterinnen-Zeitung (she, Laura [Marx's second daughter], and Tussy are the chief contributors) and she says it could never occur to her to force the drivel of the American swell-mob-ladies upon working women. What you have so kindly sent her has enabled her to become well-posted again and has convinced her that these ladies are still as supercilious and narrow-minded as ever; she merely wants to give this one magazine a couple of months' trial. In the interim she thanks you most sincerely for your kindness. ... "The story about Gompers is as follows: He wrote me and sent me detailed papers of his organization. I was out of town a great deal at the time - in summer - and tremendously busy in-between. Nor was I at all clear about the matter; I thought Iliacos extra peccatur muros et intra [They sin inside and outside the Trojan walls]. Then it was said that Gompers would come to Brussels or over here, and so I thought I would settle the matter orally. Afterward, when he didn't come, I forgot about the matter. But I shall look up the documents and write him that I decline the role* with thanks. "I wrote K. Kautsky a few days ago and instructed him to inquire of Dietz regarding the reprinting of your articles in a separate book; I am still waiting for a reply. Haste makes waste is the motto in Germany, especially in [Stuttgart]" . . .__________ * "Of arbitrator between the American Federation of Labor and the Socialist Labor Party." {Note by International Publishers.}FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 164) London, March 14, 1892 ... "Secondly, Paul says we must reap where Boulanger has sown. Exactly so, but reap the masses, and discard the leaders, as the plan was with the Possibilists; but these leaders have no masses behind them, and are themselves highly undesirable bedfellows." ...Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg(MEW 38, p. 305) London, March 15, 1892 ... "But once the Russian peasant is condemned to having to become an industrial or agrarian proletarian, the decline of the land-owner seems to be certain also. From everything, I conclude that this class is indebted even more than the peasants and must gradually sell all their properties. And between the two, it seems, steps a new class of property owners, village kulaks or urban bourgeois - maybe the fathers of a future Russian real-estate aristocracy? "The crop failure of last year has made all that crystal clear. I fully share your opinion that the causes are of an entirely social nature. With regard to deforestation, this is, like the ruin of the peasants, an essential condition of vital importance for bourgeois society. There is no "civilised" country of Europe which has not felt this, and America*, and Russia doubtlessly also, are experiencing it at this moment. So deforestation is in my eyes essentially a social factor as well as a social result. But at the same time it provides the interested parties with the favorite pretext of blaming economic failures on a cause for which obviously nobody can be made responsible."__________ * "In America I saw this four years ago with my own eyes. There great efforts are being made to work against the consequences and to make good the mistakes." - F.E.ENGELS TO SCHLUETER (p. 242) London, March 30, 1892 "Your great obstacle in America, it seems to me, lies in the exceptional position of the native-born workers. Up to 1848 one could speak of a permanent native-born working class only as an exception. The small beginnings of one in the cities in the East still could always hope to become farmers or bourgeois. Now such a class has developed and has also organized itself on trade-union lines to a great extent. But it still occupies an aristocratic position and wherever possible leaves the ordinary badly paid occupations to the immigrants, only a small portion of whom enter the aristocratic trade unions. But these immigrants are divided into different nationalities, which understand neither one another nor, for the most part, the language of the country. And your bourgeoisie knows much better even than the Austrian government how to play off one nationality against the other: Jews, Italians, Bohemians, etc., against Germans and Irish, and each one against the other, so that differences in workers' standards of living exist, I believe, in New York to an extent unheard of elsewhere. And added to this is the complete indifference of a society that has grown up on a purely capitalist basis, without any easygoing feudal background, toward the human lives that perish in the competitive struggle. . . . "In such a country continually renewed waves of advance, followed by equally certain setbacks, are inevitable. Only the advances always become more powerful, the setbacks less paralyzing, and on the whole the cause does move forward. But this I consider certain: the purely bourgeois foundation, with no prebourgeois swindle back of it, the corresponding colossal energy of development, which is displayed even in the mad exaggeration of the present protective tariff system, will one day bring about a change that will astound the whole world. Once the Americans get started, it will be with an energy and impetuousness compared with which we in Europe shall be mere children."FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 173) London, May 19, 1892 "How poorly organised your statistical service is! In Germany, we should have had all the results within 3-4 days after the 2nd ballot, and Le Socialiste of the 15th gives only very haphazard and incomplete information. But it will come, you will see that nothing strikes the imagination of the masses so forcibly as a good array of figures of electoral victories, well set out. It is of capital importance above all when it's a matter of making the workers realise the strength of action that universal suffrage gives them. Don't forget to complete your statistical results of May 1st, 1892 - for comparison with the figures which the '93 parliamentary elections will show; should there be an advance, of which I am sure, you will see the effect this will have when friends and enemies can ascertain the progress, the ground won in a year, by incontestable figures." ...Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg(MEW 38, p. 364) London, June 18, 1892 ... "There can be no doubt that the present stormy growth of modern "big industry" in Russia has only been caused by artificial means, protective tariffs, state subsidies, etc. The same happened in France where protectionism has existed since Colbert without interruption, and in Spain, Italy, and since 1878, even in Germany. And that, even though Germany had already almost completed its industrialization when in 1878 protective tariffs were introduced to help the capitalists impose on their domestic customers such high prices that in foreign countries they could sell below cost. And America has done exactly the same in order to shorten the period in which American manufacture would not have been able to compete with England under the same conditions. I do not doubt that America, France, Germany and even Austria will reach the point where they can successfully confront the English competition on the free world market with at least a number of important articles. France, America and Germany have broken England's industrial monopoly already to a certain degree, which is very noticeable here. Will Russia get just as far? I doubt it, because Russia, like Italy, suffers from a lack of coal at the places favorable for industry" ...Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 38, p. 377) London, June 25, 1892 ... "Many thanks for your information regarding the Sorge-Dietz affair. Since Sorge has not written me as to how far your negotiations have progressed, and since I needed to know that before I could do anything myself, this was important to me. Dietz is too exclusively after a mass market. If he wants to be the publisher of the scientific socialists, he must establish a department where books which are being sold more slowly can also find a place. If not, someone else must be found. Really scientific literature cannot be marketed by the tens of thousands, and the publisher must provide for that." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 38, p. 439) Ryde, Isle of Wight, August 23, 1892 ... "But to Stuttgart I will come on no account, and therefore I will negotiate with Dietz shortly in writing, as soon as I know that he hasn't gone with Bebel on a trip. The matter itself is, after all, already settled, it is only a question of the details, so you can work on the additions, and the more complete they are, the better. Especially if you wanted to treat the time since 1870 a little more fully, it would be good to include also the fortunes of the avowedly socialist German party and the blunders they committed. You must consider that you write for a public that doesn't know anything at all about things there and have to be told the plain truth. And even if the Messrs. leaders in New York and Cincinnati grumble, you don't have to give a fig, you are used to it. ... "Last week all of Lancashire voted in all districts, with mostly very large majorities, for 8 hours instead of 10. In short, the thing is marching splendidly here too, and next year not only Austria and France, but England also will march behind Germany, and that will surely finally also have the proper effect on your Anglo-Americans, especially if your militia is doing some more shooting to drive out some of their republican and great-country arrogance." ...Engels to Victor Adler in Lunz(MEW 38, pp. 444-5) Ryde, August 30, 1892 ... "What you say about tactics is only too true. But there are only too many people, who, for the sake of not having to exercise their brains, want to apply for all eternity the tactics meant for the moment. Tactics are not made from nothing, but according to changing circumstances. In our present situation, we must only too often let ourselves be dictated to by our opponents. "You are also correct with regard to the independents. I still remember the years when I - at that time still officially corresponding with Liebknecht - constantly had to fight against the German Spiessburgerei [philistinism] which was seeping in everywhere. All in all, we have that behind us in Germany, but what Spiessers are sitting in the party-faction and are continuing to come into it! A labor party in such a situation can choose only between workers who are immediately being disciplined and then go to the dogs as party pensioners, and Spiessburgers who maintain themselves but disgrace the party. And compared with these people, the independents are priceless. "What you say about the rapid industrial progress of Austria and Hungary has pleased me enormously. That is the only solid basis for progress in our movement. And that is also the only good side of protectionism - at least for most continental countries and America. Big industry, big capitalists and large masses of proletarians are being bred artificially, the centralization of capital is being accelerated, the middle sectors are being destroyed. In Germany, protective tariffs were actually superfluous, since they were introduced just at the moment when Germany established itself on the world market, and this process they have disturbed; but on the other hand they have filled many voids in German industry which otherwise would have remained voids for a long time. And if Germany is forced to sacrifice its protective tariffs to its position on the world market it will be more competitive than ever before. In Germany, as in America, protective tariffs are now a pure obstacle because they prevent these countries from occupying the proper position on the world market. In America they must therefore soon go down, and Germany must follow. "But, as you elevate your industry, you do a good thing for England; the sooner its rule over the world market is totally destroyed the sooner the workers here come into power. The continental and American competition (also the Indian) has finally caused a crisis in Lancashire, and the first consequence was the worker's sudden conversion to the 8-hour day."Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg(MEW 38, pp. 468, 470) London, September 22, 1892 ... "I can't see how the results of the industrial revolution which is going on before our eyes in Russia is in any way different from those we saw in England, Germany, and America. In America, the conditions for management and property in agriculture are different. And that is indeed a difference. ... "Take England! The last new market, which, if opened could bring a temporary revival to English trade, is China. Therefore, English capital insists on building Chinese railroads. But Chinese railroads mean the destruction of the entire basis of Chinese small agriculture and cottage industry, and since there isn't even a Chinese grande industrie as a counterweight, it will be made impossible for millions of people to make a living. The consequence will be mass emigration as the world has not seen before, a flooding of America, Asia and Europe by the hated Chinese who will compete with the American, Australian and European worker, because the Chinese standard of living is the lowest in the world. And if the mode of production in Europe by that time has not yet been revolutionized, that will then become necessary. "Capitalist production creates its own demise, and you can be sure it will do this also in Russia. It can, and if it lasts long enough, certainly will cause a fundamental agrarian revolution - I mean a revolution in land ownership which will ruin landowners as well as kulaks, and replace them with a new class of big land-owners recruited from village-kulaks and bourgeois speculators from the cities. At any rate, the conservative elements who have introduced capitalism into Russia will one day be awfully astounded by the consequences of their actions."FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 211) London, November 12, 1892 ... "The fruits of your peregrinations through France begin to ripen, and all of us are pleased to see the progress made in France. Do you realise now what a splendid weapon you in France have had in your hands for forty years in universal suffrage; if only people had known how to use it! It's slower and more boring than the call to revolution, but it's ten times more sure, and what is even better, it indicates with the most perfect accuracy the day when a call to armed revolution has to be made; it's even ten to one that universal suffrage, intelligently used by the workers, will drive the rulers to overthrow legality, that is, to put us in the most favourable position to make the revolution."Engels to August Bebel in Berlin(MEW 38, pp. 518-9) London, November 19, 1892 ... "I must congratulate you on your resolutions. They are excellent. I only know one person who could do it better, and that was Marx. The one about state socialism as well as the one about anti-semitism hits the nail on the head. And exactly such resolutions were until now the weakness of the German movement; they are feeble, uncertain, imprecise, verbose; in short, mostly shameful. Luckily they are so untranslatable that the translator in a foreign language is forced to put the sense into them which they didn't have by themselves." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, pp. 220-2) London, December 5, 1892 ... "Ah le Panama! I can tell you I am 45 years younger again, and living through a second 47. Then La Presse (Girardin's) brought every day a fresh revelation about some scandal, or some other paper brought a reply to some charge of his; and this went on till it killed Louis Philippe. But those scandals and even those of the Second Empire dwindle into nothingness compared with this grand national Steeplechase of Scandals. Louis Bonaparte took jolly good care, when he coaxed the peasants' money out of their buried hoards, to do so for the benefit of his State loans which were safe; but here the savings of the small tradesman, the peasant, the domestic servant and above all of the petite rentier, the loudest howler of all, have gone into irretrievable ruin, and the miracle has been performed of transforming a canal which has not been dug out, into an unfathomable abyss. 1,500 million francs, 60 million pound sterling, all gone, gone for ever, except what has found its way into the pockets of swindlers, politicians, and journalists; and the money got together by swindles and corrupt dodges unequaled even in America. What a base of operations for a socialistic campaign! "The thing has evidently been based upon its own immensity. Everybody considered himself safe because everybody else was as deeply in it. But that is just what now makes hushing up impossible; partial disclosures having set in, the innumerable receivers of "boodle" (for here American is the only possible language) are by their very numbers debarred from common and concerted action, everybody fights on his own hook and as best he can, and no talking and preaching can prevent a general sauve-qui-peut {rout}. That the police have placed themselves at the disposal of the Committee after the strike of the courts of law, show that confidence in the stability of swindle is broken, and that it is considered safe to keep well with the "financial purity" side. "To my mind c'est le commencement de la fin {it's the beginning of the end}. The bourgeois republic and its politicians can hardly outlive this unparalleled exposure. There are but three possibilities: an attempt at monarchy, another Boulanger, or socialism. The first and the second, if attempted, could only lead to the third, and thus we may be called upon, long before we in consequence of our own action had a right to expect it, to enter upon a career of immense responsibility. I should be glad of it, if it does not come too soon and too suddenly. It will do our Germans good to see that the French have not lost their historical initiative. A country cannot pass through 200 years like what 1648-1848 were for Germany without leaving a small impression of the philistine even on the working class. Our revolution of 48/49 was too short and too incomplete to wipe that out altogether. Of course, the next revolution which is preparing in Germany with a consistency and steadiness unequaled anywhere else, would come of itself in time, say 1898-1904; but revolutionary times, preparing a thoroughgoing crisis, in France, would hasten that process, and moreover, if the thing breaks out in France first, say 1894, then Germany follows suit at once and them the Franco-German Proletarian Alliance forces the hand of England and smashes up in one blow both the triple and the Franco-Russian conspiracies; them we have a revolutionary war against Russia - if not even a revolutionary echo from Russia - vogue la galère! [And let it rip!]" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 243-5) London, December 31, 1892 . . . "Here in old Europe things are a little livelier than in your "youthful" country, which still doesn't quite want to get out of its hobbledehoy stage. It is remarkable, but quite natural, how firmly rooted are bourgeois prejudices even in the working class in such a young country, which has never known feudalism and has grown up on a bourgeois basis from the beginning. Out of this very opposition to the mother country - which is still clothed in its feudal disguise - the American worker also imagines that the traditionally inherited bourgeois regime is something progressive and superior by nature and for all time, a non plus ultra [not to be surpassed]. Just as in New England, Puritanism, the reason for the whole colony's existence, has become for this very reason a traditional heirloom and almost inseparable from local patriotism. The Americans may strain and struggle as much as they like, but they cannot discount their future - colossally great as it is - all at once like a bill of exchange; they must wait for the date on which it falls due; and just because their future is so great, their present must occupy itself mainly with preparatory work for the future, and this work, as in every young country, is of a predominantly material nature and involves a certain backwardness of thought, a clinging to the traditions connected with the foundation of the new nationality. The Anglo-Saxon race - these damned Schleswig-Holsteiners, as Marx always called them - is slow-witted anyhow, and its history, both in Europe and America (economic success and predominantly peaceful political development), has encouraged this still more. Only great events can be of assistance here, and if, added to the more or less completed transfer of the public lands to private ownership, there now comes the expansion of industry under a less insane tariff policy and the conquest of foreign markets, it may go well with you, too. The class struggles here in England, too, were more turbulent during the period of development of large-scale industry and died down just in the period of England's undisputed industrial domination of the world. In Germany, too, the development of large-scale industry since 1850 coincides with the rise of the Socialist movement, and it will be no different, probably, in America. It is the revolutionising of all established conditions by industry as it develops that also revolutionizes people's minds. "Moreover, the Americans have for a long time been providing the European world with the proof that the bourgeois republic is the republic of capitalist businessmen, in which politics are a business deal like any other; and the French, whose ruling bourgeois politicians have long known this and practiced it in secret, are now at last, through the Panama scandal, also learning this truth on a national scale. But to keep the constitutional monarchies form putting on virtuous airs, every one of them has its little Panama: England, the building societies' scandals, one of which, the Liberator, has thoroughly "liberated" a mass of small depositors from some ?8,000, 000; Germany, the Baare scandals and L?we's guns (which prove that the Prussian officer steals as he always did, but very, very little - the one thing in which he is modest); Italy, the Banca Romana, which is already nearly a Panama, having bought up about 150 deputies and senators; I am informed that documents about this are to be published in Switzerland shortly - Schlüter should watch for everything that appears in the papers about the Banca Romana. And in Holy Russia the Old-Russian Prince Meshchersky is outraged by the indifference with which the Panama disclosures are received in Russia and can explain it to himself only by the fact that Russian virtue has been corrupted by French examples, and "we ourselves have more than one Panama at home." "But, all the same, the Panama affair is the beginning of the end of the bourgeois republic and may soon put us in a very responsible position. The whole of the opportunist gang and the majority of the Radicals are disgracefully compromised; the government is trying to hush it up, but that is no longer possible; the documentary evidence is in the hands of people who want to overthrow the present rulers: (1) the Orleanists; (2) the fallen minister Constans, whose career has been ended by revelations about his scandalous past; (3) Rochefort and the Boulangists; (4) Cornelius Herz, who, himself deeply involved in all sorts of fraud, has evidently fled to London only to buy himself out by putting the others into a hole. All these have more than enough evidence against the gang of thieves, but are holding back, first, in order not to use up all their ammunition at once, and second, in order to give both the government and the courts time to compromise themselves beyond hope of rescue. This can only suit us; enough stuff is coming to light by degrees to keep up the excitement and to compromise the dirigeants [leaders] more and more, while it also gives time for the scandal and the revelations to make their effect felt in the most remote corner of the country before the inevitable dissolution of the Chamber and new elections, which however ought not to come too soon. "It is clear that this affair brings the moment considerably nearer when our people will become the only possible leaders of the state in France. Only things should not move too quickly; our people in France are not ripe for power by a long shot. But as things stand at present it is absolutely impossible to say what intermediate stages will fill out this interval. The old Republican parties are compromised to the last man, and the Royalists and Clericals sold Panama lottery tickets on a large scale and identified themselves with them - if the ass Boulanger had not shot himself, he would now be master of the situation. I'm curious to know whether the old unconscious logic of French history will again hold good this time. There will be plenty of surprises. If only some general or other does not swing himself to the top during the intervals of clarification and start war - that is the one danger." ... Paul Lafargue was not quite as sanguine as Engels over the prospects of immediate revolution in Europe all because of the Panama scandal, as indicated by his January 2, 1893 reply to Engels (ELC III, pp. 226-7): . . . "One would have to be an imbecile to believe that Paris is in an uproar and on the eve of revolution. I have already told you that the population is unconcerned; there has not yet been a single popular demonstration; six years ago, during the Wilson affair, 100,000 people surrounded the Chambers demanding Grévy's resignation. The police have had to bring out their anarchists to simulate some sort of agitation; that didn't come off; the police had to arrest their Pemjean sentenced to 8 month's imprisonment, but let him off this time. The population in other industrial centres is equally unconcerned; the Panama swindles don't interest them, they have not been robbed of anything. It is only the small bourgeois who have lost, and all they care about is getting their money back; the financiers are busy starting another Panama. Thiébaud, Boulanger's adviser and bear-leader, made a speech explaining that it only requires a few millions to buy a canal and that it would be "a national crime" if the Americans were allowed to take possession. All the Paris newspapers published the speech. "This all goes to show that the population is anything but revolutionary."LAURA LAFARGUE TO FREDERICK ENGELS IN LONDON(ELC III, p. 225) [January 2, 1893] ... "As for myself, my dear General, you know that it's enough to be a Marxist and Engelsist to stay young forever!" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 246-7) Sunday, January 18, 1893 ... "The Fabians here in London are a band of careerists who have understanding enough to realize the inevitability of the social revolution, but who could not possibly entrust this tremendous job to the crude proletariat alone and are therefore kind enough to set themselves at the head. Fear of the revolution is their fundamental principle. They are the "eddicated" par excellence. Their socialism is municipal socialism; the community, not the nation, should become the owner of the means of production, at least temporarily. This socialism of theirs is then represented as an extreme but inevitable consequence of bourgeois liberalism, and from this follow their tactics, not to fight the Liberals decisively as opponents, but to push them on to socialist conclusions: therefore to intrigue with them, to permeate liberalism with socialism - not to put up Socialist candidates against Liberals, but to palm them off and force them upon the Liberals, or to deceive the latter into taking them. They naturally do not realize that in doing this they are either betrayed and deceived themselves or else are betraying socialism. "With great industry they have produced, among all sorts of rubbish, some good propaganda writing as well, in fact the best that the English have turned out in this respect. But as soon as they come to their specific tactic: hushing up the class struggle, it gets rotten. Hence, too, their fanatical hatred of Marx and of all of us - because of the class struggle." "These people have, of course, a considerable bourgeois following and hence money, and have many able workers in the provinces who would have nothing to so with the S.D.F." {Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation} ...Engels to Louis Héritier(MEW 39, p.12) London, January 20,1893 ... "Our working class has to take the few hours it can dedicate to reading out of rest and sleep; it therefore has the right to demand that everything we offer it be the result of conscientious work, and not give occasion to controversies that it cannot possibly follow."FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 211) London, February 25, 1893 ... "As for the Millerand & Co. Rad[ical] Soc[ialists], it is absolutely essential that the alliance with them should be based on the fact that our Party is a separate party, and that they recognise that. Which in no way rules out joint action in the forthcoming elections, provided that the distribution of seats to be jointly contested is made in accordance with the actual state of the respective forces; those gentlemen are in the habit of claiming the lion's share. "Do not let the fact that your speeches do not create as much stir as formerly discourage you. Look at our people in Germany: they were booed for years on end, and now the 36 dominate the Reichstag. Bebel writes saying: if we were eighty or a hundred (out of 400 members), the Reichstag would become an impossibility. There is not a debate, no matter what the subject, in which we do not intervene and we are listened to by all the parties. The debate on the socialist organisation of the future lasted five days, and Bebel's speech was wanted in three and a half million copies. Now they are having the whole debate published in pamphlets at five sous, and the effect, already tremendous, will be doubled!" ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 248-9) London, March 18, 1893 ... "The silver business in America does not seem to be able to settle down otherwise than through a crash. Nor does {President} Cleveland seem to have the power and courage to break the necks of this bribery ring. And it would be really good if things came to a head. A nation - a young nation - so conceited about its "practice" and so frightfully dense theoretically as the Americans are gets thoroughly rid of so deep-rooted a fixed idea only through its own sufferings. The plausible idea of imagining that there isn't enough money in the world because one hasn't any when one needs it - this childish idea common to the paper-currency swindle à la Kellogg and to the silver swindle is most surely cured by experiment and bankruptcy, which may also take a course that is very favorable for us. If only some sort of tariff reform is effected this fall, you may be quite satisfied. The rest will follow; the main thing is that American industry is enabled to compete in the world market. "Here things are going very well. The masses are unmistakably in motion; you are getting the details from Aveling's somewhat long-winded reports in the Volkszeitung. The best evidence is that the old sects are losing ground and must fall into line. The Social-Democratic Federation has actually deposed Mr. Hyndman; he is allowed to grumble and complain a bit about international politics here and there in Justice, but he is finished - his own people have found him out. The man provoked me personally and politically wherever he could for ten years; I never did him the honor of answering him, in the conviction that he was man enough to ruin himself, and in the end I have been justified." ...ENGELS TO MR. F. WIESEN (p. 250) London, March 14, 1893 "I do not see what violation of the social-democratic principle is necessarily involved in putting up candidates for any elective political office or in voting for these candidates, even if we are aiming at the abolition of this office itself. "One may be of the opinion that the best way to abolish the Presidency and the Senate in America is to elect men to these offices who are pledged to effect their abolition, and then one will consistently act accordingly. Others may think that this method is inappropriate; that's a matter of opinion. There may be circumstances under which the former mode of action would also involve a violation of revolutionary principle; I fail to see why that should always and everywhere be the case. "For the immediate goal of the labor movement is the conquest of political power for and by the working class. If we agree on that, the difference of opinion regarding the ways and means of struggle to be employed therein can scarcely lead to differences of principle among sincere people who have their wits about them. In my opinion those tactics are the best in each country that leads to the goal most certainly and in the shortest time. But we are yet very far from this goal precisely in America, and I believe I am not making a mistake in explaining the importance still attributed to such academic questions over there by this very circumstance." ...Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge in Hoboken(MEW 39, p. 54) London, March 18, 1893 ... "A young man from Texas, F. Wiesen in Baird, asked me to declare something against the nomination of candidates "for president", that this was a denial of revolutionary principle, since the position of president was to be done away with. I answered him the enclosed; should it get to the public in a garbled form, do me the favor to have it printed in the "Volkszeitung"." The following is a portion of an interview with Engels by a reporter from Le Figaro about German Socialism. The interview was also reprinted in Le Socialiste of May 20, 1893 (ELC III, pp. 392-3): "Will the Socialist Party put up candidates in all the constituencies?" "Yes, we shall stand candidates in 400 constituencies. It is important for us to test our strength." "And the final aim of you German Socialists?" "But we have no final aim.. We are evolutionists, we have no intention of dictating definitive laws to mankind. Preconceptions regarding the detailed organisation of the society of the future? You will find no trace of any such thing among us. We shall be quite satisfied when we have put the means of production into the hands of the community, and we know well enough that that is impossible with the monarchic and federal government of to-day."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 253) London, May 17, 1893 ... "The May First demonstration here was very nice; but it is already becoming somewhat of an everyday or rather annual matter; the first fresh bloom is gone. The narrow-mindedness of the Trades Council and of the socialist sects - Fabians and the S.D.F. - again compelled us to hold two demonstrations, but everything went off as desired and we - the Eight-Hour Committee - had many more people than the united opposition. In particular, our international platform had a very good audience. I figure that there was a total of 240,000 in the park, of which we had 140,000, and the opposition at most 100,000." . . .ENGELS TO HOURWICH (pp. 253-4) London, May 27, 1893 ... "As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the part which the peasantry may be expected to take in it, these are subjects on which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But for that, I am sorry to say, I have not at present the time. And then, I have every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the effect you expect of it. I know from my own experience (1849-1852) how unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent factions so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an overactive mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means of action. The word of an outsider would have but a trifling, and at best a passing, effect. If you have followed the Russian emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for instance, passages from Marx's writings and correspondence have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts from the classics or from the New Testament, by various tions of Russian emigrants. Whatever I might say on the subject you mention would probably share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so for all these various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, to abstain."FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, pp. 271-3) London, June 27, 1893 ... "Then you say: the French Workers' Party is at one with German S[ocial] - D[emocracy] against the German Empire, with the Belgian Workers' Party against the Cob[ourg] monarchy, with the Italians against the Savoy monarchy, etc., etc. "There would be nothing against all that if you had added: and all these parties are at one with us against the bourgeois Republic which oppresses us, Panamises us and ties us to the Russian tsar. After all, your Republic was made by old Wilhelm and Bismarck; it is quite as bourgeois as any of our monarchist governments, and you mustn't suppose that with the cry of "Long live the Republic" on the day after Panama, you will find a single supporter in the whole of Europe. The republican form is no more than the simple negation of monarchy - and the overthrow of the monarchy will be accomplished simply as a corollary to revolution; in Germany the bourgeois parties are so bankrupt that we shall pass at once from monarchy to the social republic. Hence you cannot go on opposing your bourgeois republic to the monarchies as something to which other nations should aspire. Your republic and our monarchies are all one in relation to the proletariat; if you help us against our monarchist bourgeois, we shall help you against your republican bourgeois. It's a case of reciprocity and by no means the deliverance of the downtrodden Monarchists by the great-hearted French Republicans, this doesn't tally with the international outlook and even less with the historical situation which has brought your republic to the feet of the tsar. Don't forget that, if France makes war on Germany in the interests and with the help of the tsar, it is Germany which will be the revolutionary centre. "But there is another very regrettable affair. You are "at one with German S[ocial]-D[emocracy] against the German Empire". This has been translated in the bourgeois press as "gegen das deutsche Reich". And that is what everybody will see in it. For Empire means "Reich" as well as "Kaisertum" (imperial regime); but in "Reich" the emphasis is laid on the central power as representing national unity, and for this, the political condition of their existence, the German Socialists would fight to the end. Never would we wish to reduce Germany to the pre-1866 state of division and impotence. Had you said against the emperor, or against the imperial regime, not one could have said much, although poor Wilhelm is hardly of a stature to deserve being honoured in this way; it is the owning class, landlords and capitalists, which is the enemy; and that is so clearly understood in Germany that our workmen will not understand the meaning of your offer to help them to defeat the crackpot of Berlin. "So I have asked Liebk[necht] not to mention your declaration insofar as the bourgeois papers do not do so; but if, based upon this unfortunate expression, there were attacks on our people as traitors, it would give rise to a rather painful argument. "To sum up: a little more reciprocity could do no harm - equality between nations is as necessary as that between individuals. "On the other hand, your manner of speaking of the republic as a desirable thing in itself for the proletariat, and of France as the chosen people, prevents you mentioning the - unpleasant but undeniable - fact of the Russian alliance, or rather the Russian vassalage." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 256) London, Oct. 7, 1893 ... "I saw De Leon and Sanial in Zurich. They did not impress me."Engels to Nikolai Franzewitsch Danielson in Petersburg(MEW 39, pp. 148-9) London, October 17, 1893 ... "In the Berlin "Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt", a Mr. P. v. Struve has published a long article about your book. In one respect I must agree with him: I also think that the present capitalist phase in the development of Russia is an unavoidable consequence of the historical conditions which were created by the Crimean War, of the way in which, in 1861, the revolution in the agrarian system came about, and of the political stagnation in Europe in general. He is definitely wrong in comparing Russia's present situation with that of the United States in order to refute what he calls your pessimistic view of the future. He says that the bad consequences of modern capitalism in Russia will be overcome just as easily as in the United States. Here he is completely forgetting that the USA from the very beginning were modern, bourgeois; that they were founded by petit bourgeois and peasants who fled from European feudalism in order to establish a purely bourgeois society. In contrast to this, in Russia we have a base of a primitive communist character, a gentil society stemming from the time before civilization which, although falling apart, still serves as the base, the material on which and with which the capitalist revolution (for it is a real social revolution) operates. America has had for more than a century a money economy; in Russia the rule was almost exclusively an economy of exchange of natural products. Therefore it is a matter of course that the revolution in Russia has to be much more violent, much more incisive and accompanied with much more suffering than in America."ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 257-8) London, Dec. 2, 1893 ... "The repeal of the silver-purchase law has saved America from a severe money crisis and will promote industrial prosperity. But I don't know whether it wouldn't have been better for this crash to have actually occurred. The phrase "cheap money" seems to be bred deep in the bone of your Western farmers. First, they imagine that if there are lots of means of circulation in the country, the interest rate must drop, whereby they confuse means of circulation and available money capital, concerning which very enlightening things will be brought out in Volume III {of "Capital"}. ond, it suits all debtors to contract debts in good currency and to pay them off later in depreciated currency. That is why the debt-ridden Prussian Junkers also clamor for a double currency, which would provide them with a veiled Solonic riddance of their debts. Now if they had been able to wait with the silver reform in the United States until the consequences of the nonsense had also reacted upon the farmers, that would have opened many of their dense heads. "The tariff reform, slow as it is in getting started, does seem to have caused a sort of panic among the manufacturers in New England already. I hear - privately and from the papers - of the layoff of numerous workers. But that will calm down as soon as the law is passed and the uncertainty is over; I am convinced that America can boldly enter into competition with England in all the great branches if industry. "The German socialists in America are an annoying business. The people you get over there from Germany are usually not the best - they stay here - and in any event they are not at all a fair sample of the German party. And as is the case everywhere, each new arrival feels himself called upon to turn everything he finds upside down, turning it into something new, so that a new epoch may date from himself. Moreover, most of these greenhorns remain stuck in New York for a long time or for life, continually reinforced by new additions and relieved of the necessity of learning the language of the country or of getting to know American conditions properly. All of that certainly causes much harm, but, on the other hand, it is not to be denied that American conditions involve very great and peculiar difficulties for a steady development of a workers' party. "First, the Constitution, based as in England upon party government, which causes every vote for any candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties to appear to be lost. And the American, like the Englishman, wants to influence his state; he does not throw his vote away. "Then, and more especially, immigration, which divides the workers into two groups: the native-born and the foreigners, and the latter in turn into (1) the Irish, (2) the Germans, (3) the many small groups, each of which understands only itself: Czechs, Poles, Italians, Scandinavians, etc. And then the Negroes. To form a single party out of these requires quite unusually powerful incentives. Often there is a sudden violent élan, but the bourgeois need only wait passively, and the dissimilar elements of the working class fall apart again. "Third, through the protective tariff system and the steadily growing domestic market the workers must have been exposed to a prosperity no trace of which has been seen here in Europe for years now (except in Russia, where, however, the bourgeois profit by it and not the workers). "A country like America, when it is really ripe for a socialist workers' party, certainly cannot be hindered from having one by the couple of German socialist doctrinaires." ...ENGELS TO SCHLUETER (p. 259) [London] Dec. 2, 1893 . . . "Now you are at last on the road to getting rid of bimetallism and of the McKinley tariff; that will do much to promote developments over there, though a good silver crash would have been very good to enlighten the marvelously stupid American farmer and his cheap money." . . .FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 325) London, March 6, 1894 ... "Then your Mr. Juarès, this doctrinaire professor, who is nevertheless ignorant, above all, of political economy, and of essentially superficial talents, misuses his gift of the gab to push himself to the fore and pose as the mouthpiece of socialism, which he does not so much as understand. Otherwise he would never have dared to put forward State socialism which represents one of the infantile diseases of proletarian socialism, a disease which they went through in Germany, for example, more than a dozen years ago, under the regime of the Anti-Socialist Laws, when that was the only form tolerated by the government (and even protected by it). And even then only a negligible minority of the Party was caught in that snare for a short while; after the Wyden Congress [1880] the whole thing petered out completely. "Ah, yes, but we have a republic in France, the ex-Radicals will say; it's quite another matter in our case, we can use the government to introduce socialist measures!"ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 261) London, March 21, 1894 ... "After the tariff business is put in order somewhat over there and the import duty on raw materials is abolished, the crisis will probably subside and the superiority of American over European industry will have a telling effect. Only then will things grow serious here in England; but then they'll do so rapidly." . . .ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 263) London, May 12, 1894 ... "The Social-Democratic Federation here shares with your German-American Socialists the distinction of being the only parties who have contrived to reduce the Marxist theory of development to a rigid orthodoxy, which the workers are not to reach themselves by their own class feeling, but which they have to gulp down as an article of faith at once and without development. That is why both of them remain mere ts and come, as Hegel says, from nothing through nothing to nothing. I haven't had time as yet to read Schlüter's polemic with your Germans, but shall look through it tomorrow. From former articles in the Volkszeitung the right tone seems to have been struck." . . .FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 332) London, June 2, 1894 ... "It is always on the cards that the whole thing will not turn out too badly, and even well; but, in the meantime, you will go through some curious experiences, and I am glad for us all that there is a solid body of troops in Germany whose actions will decide the battle. This socialist mania which is emerging in your country may lead to a decisive struggle in which you win the first victories; the revolutionary traditions of the country and of the capital, the character of your army, reorganised since 1870 on a far more popular basis - all this makes such an eventuality possible. But to ensure victory, to destroy the foundations of capitalist society, you will need the active support of a much stronger, more numerous, more tried and more conscious socialist party than you have at your command. It would mean the achievement of what we have foreseen and predicted for many years. The French give the signal, open fire, and the Germans decide the battle. "In the meantime, we are nowhere near that and I am very curious to see how the confused enthusiasm surrounding you will resolve itself." ...Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 39, p. 277) London, July 28, 1894 "In all of America not a single intelligent correspondent can be found, with the exception of Sorge and Schlüter, because the Germans there stubbornly adhere to the same tarian attitude towards the working masses which is maintained here by the Social Democratic Federation. Instead of viewing the movements of the Americans as the progressive element which, even through wrong ways and detours, must finally lead to the same result as that which they brought with them from Europe, they see in them (in the American movements) only the wrong ways and pompously look down on the stupid blind Americans, brag about their orthodox superiority, repulse the Americans instead of attracting them, and they therefore themselves remain a powerless little sect. For that reason their writers fall into pure ideology and see all conditions wrongly and narrowly." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 341) [August 23 or 24, 1894] ... "The last two {Congresses} will deal with the question of peasants and rural workers. In general the views of the two national groups are the same, save that you {in France}, the uncompromising revolutionaries of yesterday, now lean rather further towards opportunism than the Germans, who will probably not support any measure serving to maintain and store up the smallholding against the disintegrating action of capitalism. On the other hand, they will agree with you that it is not our task to accelerate or force this disintegrating action, and the important thing is for small landowners to combine in agricultural associations to farm jointly on a large scale."ENGELS TO SORGE (p. 263-6) London, Nov. 10, 1894 ... "The movement over here still resembles the American movement, save that it is somewhat ahead of you. The mass instinct that the workers must form a party of their own against the two official parties is getting stronger and stronger; it again showed itself more than ever in the municipal elections on November 1st. But the various old traditional memories, and the lack of people able to turn this instinct into conscious action and to organize it all over the country, encourage the persistence, in this early stage, of haziness of thought and local isolation of action. Anglo-Saxon sectarianism prevails in the labor movement, too. The Social-Democratic Federation, just like your German Socialist Labor Party, has managed to transform our theory into the rigid dogma of an orthodox sect. It is narrow-mindedly exclusive and, thanks to Hyndman, it has a thoroughly rotten tradition in international politics, which is shaken from time to time, to be sure, but which hasn't been broken with as yet. ... "The war in China has given the old China a deathblow. Isolation has become impossible; the introduction of railways, steam engines, electricity, and large-scale industry has become a necessity if only for reasons of military defense. But with it the old economic system of small peasant agriculture, where the family also made its industrial products itself, falls to pieces too, and with it the whole old social system which made relatively dense population possible. Millions will be turned out and forced to emigrate; and the millions will find their way to Europe, en masse. But as soon as Chinese competition sets in on a mass scale, it will rapidly bring things to a head in your country and over here, and thus the conquest of China by capitalism will at the same time furnish the impulse for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and America." ...FREDERICK ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE AT LE PERREUX(ELC III, p. 366) London, January 22, 1895 ... "So that, with the complete revolution in weapons since 1870 and, in consequence, of tactics, there is a total uncertainty about the outcome of a war where so many imponderables are involved and regarding which all the calculations made in advance are based on fictitious quantities." ...ENGELS TO SORGE (pp. 269-70) London, Jan. 16, 1895 . . . "The temporary decline of the movement in America has attracted my attention for some time now, and the German socialists won't stop it. America is the youngest, but also the oldest country in the world. Over there you have old-fashioned furniture styles alongside those you have invented all yourselves, cabs in Boston such I last saw in 1838 in London, and in the mountains stagecoaches dating from the seventeenth century alongside the Pullman cars, and in the same way you keep all the intellectual old clothes discarded in Europe. Anything that is out of date over here can survive in America for one or two generations. Karl Heinzen, for instance, not to mention religious and spiritualist superstition. Thus the old Lassalleans still survive among you, and men like Sanial, who would be superannuated in France today, can still play a role over there. That is due, on the one hand, to the fact that America is only now beginning to have time, beyond concern for material production and enrichment, for free intellectual labor and the preparatory education that this requires; and, on the other hand, to the duality of American development, which is still engaged in the primary task - clearing the tremendous virgin area - but is already compelled to enter the competition for first place in industrial production. Hence the ups and downs of the movement, depending on whether the mind of the industrial worker or that of the pioneering farmer gains predominance in the average man's head. Things will be different in a couple of years, and then great progress will be observed. For the development of the Anglo-Saxon race with its old Germanic freedom is quite peculiar, slow, zigzag in form (here in England in small zigzags, in your country colossal ones), a tacking against the wind, but it advances none the less." ...Engels to Karl Kautsky in Stuttgart(MEW 39, p. 484) London, May 21, 1895 ... "One more thing. I have suggested to Sorge that he should publish his articles about the American movement separately when they are finished. He agreed, but says that there will be much to be worked over, to be improved and filled out, and that before the next summer vacation he would hardly find time. He accepted my proposal to bring up the matter with Dietz. Will you be so kind as to ask Dietz whether he would like to take it on, and if yes, under what terms. The articles are the best and only authentic writings we have about the American movement, and I consider it very desirable that they should be preserved for the public as a separate entity." As far as I know, the series of articles by Sorge that were serialized in the Neue Zeit were not collected, translated and made available to the public, aside from the batch that went into his "The Labor Movement in the United States". If Engels thought that they were so valuable, it may be past time to make them available.(Part H Consists of Appendices 2, 3, and 4)APPENDIX TWO:The Workmen's Advocate and the Sorge-De Leon 'Controversy' The earliest issues of the Workmen's Advocate provided no indication of the existence of the SLP until an ad for a Christmas social appeared at the end of 1885. Until the end of November 1886, the WA was published in New Haven, Connecticut by the "Trades Council Publishing Committee", which seems to have been an alliance of Socialists with the Knights of Labor. After that, the WA became the official English language journal of the SLP, and was published by the NEC for its duration. In 1891, the WA was replaced by The People, as well as by the Weekly People, which are the journals associated with the SLP of more recent times. At the time of the 1889 takeover by the anarchists, Daniel De Leon was still with Bellamy's Nationalist movement, and did not made much of an impact on the WA until its final year of publication, around 1890-1. Friedrich Adolf Sorge, contemporary of Marx and Engels, moved from Germany to New Jersey in 1852, was active in the First International, corresponded with Marx and Engels from 1867 to the end, and was a valuable source of information on American topics. A series of his articles on American workers and movements appeared in the Neue Zeit newspaper in Germany, and were collected into a book entitled "The Labor Movement in the United States". A condensed debate between Sorge and De Leon appeared in the pages of the September 28, 1889 edition of the Workmen's Advocate. My major interest in going through the WA was to find that particular debate, which appears in its entirety nearly halfway down this page. While sifting through the pages of the WA in search of evidence of the alleged 'controversy' between the two, one of the most often reinforced impressions was that of the similarities of the issues between then and now. Besides labor news, features and editorials, and the struggle between anarchism and socialism, the WA contained reprints from other publications, advertisements from local businesses, news about the Party, and news about other movements, such as the Henry George 'single taxers', the Knights of Labor, and the Nationalists. There was also a lot of coverage of the Chicago Seven, who were executed for their alleged roles in the Haymarket bombing. The WA included debates between "Zeno", "XX", and others on various subjects, the effects of the Anti-Socialist Law on the movement in Germany, and an occasional reprint from Marx, such as "Wage-Labor and Capital" and the "Communist Manifesto". The tour to America by Liebknecht and the Avelings was reported on in the friendliest manner in the pages of the WA, and I detected no hint of the NEC's 'forgery' charges against Aveling that Engels, Sorge, and Florence Kelley had corresponded about at length (see Appendix 1). The editions preceding the 1889 takeover by the anarchists contained a good deal of propaganda against anarchism, including some debate over it. My synopsis of the tour through the WA begins with the year:1886 In a June 1886 edition, not long after the Chicago Haymarket demonstration during which a bomb went off and anarchists were blamed, this extract of an article entitled "A COOL REQUEST" expressed a typical socialist attitude toward anarchism: "After the capitalists have made madmen and savages by the thousand by their systematic robbery and oppression, their subsidized organs turn around and tell the Knights of Labor that it is peculiarly their business to suppress them. It can't be done so long as the system remains. One crop of Anarchists may be killed off or jailed, but the causes which produced them will breed others. The only effective way to "put down" Anarchy so that it will stay down, is to strike at its causes - landlordism, usury, monopoly and capitalistic extortion in all its forms. That is what the Knights of Labor have vowed to do, and what the very organs that are endeavoring to hold them somewhat responsible for social disorder are trying to hinder them from doing - Petersburg Exponent." In an 1886 editorial about strikebreakers, the WA advocated the election of the workers' party to the state, and often repeated that idea, but the advocacy of that type of involvement in politics nearly disappeared from the WA after the 1889 'palace coup'. In the November 28, 1886 edition, the WA became the "Official Journal of the SLP", published by the National Executive Committee.1887 The January 1, 1887 edition of the WA reported the rejection of a motion for the Party to gather anarchists and socialists together to hammer out their differences. The January 22, 1887 edition reasserted that it was still the official journal of the Trades Council, as well as the journal of the SLP. In the February 12, 1887 edition, Charles Cook wrote that "The Mission of Labor Organizations" was 'to gain control of the political power and compel labor's enemies to surrender by law their unjust claim to the product of labor.' In the February 26 and March 5, 1887 editions, the leaflet "SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM: ANTAGONISTIC OPPOSITES" was reprinted. It was noted therein that both theories ... ... "are opposites which have nothing in common but their appurtenance to Social Science. Socialists and Anarchists as such are enemies. They pursue contrary aims, and the success of the former will destroy forever the fanatical hopes of the latter. "It is true that in their theories, both are thoroughly dissatisfied with the present state of human society and its politics, and that they severely criticize almost all the economical and political constitutions and laws, teachings and practices, now prevailing. But they do so from very different points of view. The Anarchist worships at the shrine of Liberty. Liberty is his goddess, and his only deity, in theory at least. He rejects all laws imposed on him from without, and respects only such laws as he himself ordains. He wants no association but with men of his own turn of mind, no rule of the majority, no submission under any will but his own, no discipline. ... "We do not in the least deny that we have little hope for an entirely peaceful renewal of society and politics, and that we may have to fight for the redemption of the working class from the threatening complete thraldom. But that war must be forced upon us - we try our best efforts to avoid it, and though this may be impossible in most of the European States, we must and do consider it possible in the United States, and wherever freedom of speech and of the press, the right to peacefully assemble and organize and universal suffrage (inclusive of the suffrage of women) are not curtailed by existing laws. We are fully outspoken in our ideas and aims, all our working for redemption is above board; we shun secret organization for our purposes. "We therefore protest against being confounded and in any way identified with anarchists of any type; we are the implacable enemies of all anarchism. ... "we shall be revolutionists only when forced into being such by legislation and persecution withholding from us the means of a peaceable propaganda. We, Socialists, have come to stay; depend upon it." Notice that, in this pre-anarchist takeover era, it was democratic institutions that allowed socialists to conceive of peacefully achieving their goals, not the 'advances in the means of production' of the post-De Leonist era. An editorial on March 19, 1887 declared: "Now, it is generally acknowledged, and becoming more and more evident that organization and agitation without political action can never right the wrongs of Labor. We have more faith in the people organized as citizens for the purpose of grasping the political power than in all the other forms of industrial organization combined." An editorial on April 23, 1887 advocated "The Imperative Mandate", a democratic device used during the Paris Commune. The Imperative Mandate meant that ... ... "the representative officers or servants chosen, should serve so long as they perform their duties and conform to the instructions given them, which should be imperative, and carried out in the letter and spirit; and upon failure to perform the functions of office, or otherwise do as directed, the Representatives or agents should be recalled by a vote of the party whose views they are elected to represent, and others chosen by the same party to fill the vacancies, and the persons so recalled should be immediate-indicted, tried and, if found guilty, punished with the utmost rigor." The May 7, 1887 edition reported a rumor running around in the capitalist press to the effect that the SLP would merge with the anarchists. The June 4, 1887 "Strikes and Politics" editorial proclaimed: "Political conquest ... will forever do away with the crude and ineffectual strike ... Let us work for political conquest." The issue of June 25, 1887 editorialized: "Let everyone think, and everyone speak his thoughts. Then we shall know men as they are." The platform printed in that same edition contained some social demands, including: 'the workers to be secured the control of the means of production', the means of production 'to become the common property of the whole people', 'all production to be organized cooperatively', 'distribution to be in accordance with the service rendered, and with the just needs of the individuals', and the Lasallean: 'the workers to obtain the undivided product of their toil'; "And to realize our demands, we strive by all proper means to gain control of the political power." The July 2, 1887 edition demonstrated the desire of the Party to distinguish its views from those of the anarchist Johann Most. "The Condemned Anarchists" editorial of July 9, 1887 declared that the Chicago Seven should not be regarded as anarchists. In the July 16, 1887 edition, Dr. Adolph Douai (who had been severely criticized by Engels in letters to Sorge) projected a utopian vision in his lead article entitled "Trades Unionism": "We want a complete democracy combined with a government of Reason. That is impossible without the whole society consisting of trades unions which govern each itself, and together everything else. ... "There are hundreds of different interests to be taken care of within a single State; but the people whom we elect to take care thereof, are in their great majority the most ignorant persons and skilled only in mean political tricks, and in stealing the people's taxes and liberty. All reforms of this contrivance "how not to do it" have thus far proven abortive. "If this is to be changed, after the work-people will have recovered the political power, it must be done by a double kind of government - the economic concerns of the nation to be administered entirely by the trades unions, constituted democratically, so that the political State shall not meddle with them." An article in the August 13, 1887, edition proclaimed that 'the only just title to property is work.' It was noted that members of the Henry George movement had been prohibited from simultaneously holding memberships in other parties, and the Georgeist "United Labor Party" had expelled the socialist contingent. On the subject of the seven Chicago Haymarket "anarchists" sentenced to die "for exercising the constitutional right of free speech", an indignant editorial on Sept. 24, 1887, proclaimed: "And if the corruption of our judges is so complete that they will ignore the right of free speech, then, we say, and say it deliberately, that the time has come for an uprising of the people against a corrupt government according to the teaching of the Declaration of American Independence. "The only argument against such an uprising at the present time is that the people are not sufficiently organized to make an armed revolution a success. "And we are not alone in this opinion, though we are almost alone in expressing it. When the pressure becomes strong enough to compel taking sides, the best part of the American people, we are sure, will stand by the guarantee of free speech and against class laws which would curtail it." The Sept. 24, 1887 edition was one of the last in which it was advertised that the Workmen's Advocate was "A Journal of the Socialistic Labor Party". By 1888, it had become the SLP without the "ic" after 'Socialist'. SLP propaganda decades later made a bit of an issue out of that "ic", many people incorrectly claiming that the dropping of the 'ic' coincided with De Leon's modernization of the SLP. After the anarchists took over in 1889, the 'ic' was RESTORED to the Party's name for a while. The October 1, 1887 edition re-announced the launching of the Progressive Labor Party; Zeno suggested that the land should be held in common, but capital should remain in private hands; and the WA's move away from New Haven, Connecticut was hinted at. In a few successive editions, the Bill of Rights was staunchly defended. They also reported that many peaceful assemblies of socialists and trade unionists had been broken up by the police. The October 22, 1887 edition reported that the imminent execution of the Chicago Seven was an attempt to throttle free speech, and it had really been socialism and anarchism on trial there. The next few issues reported a great deal about the alleged Haymarket bombers, and the November 19 edition sadly reported their execution. The December 3, 1887 edition proclaimed Johann Most guilty of making "incendiary utterances". It also reported a call for unity between the San Francisco section of the International Workingmen's Association (I.W.A.) with the SLP. In the December 24, 1887 edition, Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, was described as a "renegade Israelite" and a "purchasable editor".1888 The January 7, 1888 edition included comments on the philosophy of the structure of the SLP: "The Socialist Labor Party is organized on the same plan as that indicated in the "Political Demands," so far as they can apply to a party organization. They have the "initiative," the "referendum;" the office of president of the Party does not exist, while an Executive Committee, responsible and subject to recall by the Party, conducts its general affairs. It is in all respects a labor party, whose internal affairs are conducted in accordance with its scientific platform. Its issue with capitalism is a plain one, and it honestly states its case." The January 28, 1888 edition contained a long obituary for Dr. Adolph Douai, and took note of his early experiences in the abolitionist movement. It also printed the Party Platform that Engels held in esteem. It contained seventeen social demands, and the following seven Political Demands: "1. The people to have the right to propose laws (initiative) and to vote upon all laws of importance (referendum). "2. Abolition of the Presidency, Vice-Presidency and Senate of the United States. An Executive Board to be established, whose members are to be elected, and may at any time be recalled by the House of Representatives as the only legislative body. The States and Municipalities to adopt corresponding amendments to their constitutions and statutes. "3. Municipal self-government. "4. Direct vote and secret ballot in all elections. Universal and equal right of suffrage without regard to color, creed, or sex. Election days to be legal holidays. The principle of minority representation to be introduced. "5. The members of all legislative bodies to be responsible to, and subject to recall by, the constituency. "6. Uniform law throughout the United States. Administration of justice to be free of charge. Abolition of capital punishment. "7. Separation of all public affairs from religion; church property to be subject to taxation." In the same January 31, 1888 edition, the attitude of the WA toward anarchism was further revealed: "Our opposition to anarchy does not necessarily include bloodthirstiness, and we are not afraid to allow those who call themselves anarchists to preach their numerous ideas of liberty to their hearts' content. Those who are so afraid of the anarchists' ramblings as to wish them silenced by death are ignorant bigots, and only prove the necessity for the civilizing influence of Socialist teaching." The "Criticizing Socialists" editorial of February 18, 1888 promised that the SLP "will cheerfully meet their opponents upon any field on which circumstance may force the question of human rights to an issue." The SLP was proclaimed to be a democratically run party in the March 10, 1888 edition. It also quoted Colton: "Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth; and no opinions so fatally mislead us, as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer, as those that are sometimes right." The March 24, 1888 edition paid tribute to the Paris Commune, and noted that the WA was looking for quarters in New York. An article in the April 7, 1888 edition stated, 'free speech has been denounced as anarchism, so defend anarchism.' The April 28, 1888 edition announced that the WA would be shifting some of its operations to New York City. The May 12, 1888 edition reported the disbanding of the Progressive Labor Party. A repeated theme in many of the WA editions of this time period were comparisons of contemporary social conditions to anarchy. In what might have been his first mentioning in the WA, the May 19, 1888 edition announced Professor De Leon as a speaker at the Labor Lyceum. Also, Johann Most was reported to have drawn a small crowd at one of his speeches. An article on physical force by Herbert Burrows in the May 26, 1888 edition reported that it might be necessary. A lead article by Zeno compared "state socialism" with anarchism. Bellamy reported on his new book entitled "Looking Backward" in a lead article in the June 2, 1888 edition. His book then became the inspiration for the Nationalist movement with which De Leon was closely associated before transiting to the SLP. In a two column article in the June 9, 1888 edition, Wm. Willey described a split between the I.W.A. and the SLP on the West Coast: "The cause of the split between the English-speaking section ... had its origin in the difference of opinion between those who could not see any other method of righting the wrongs of the producers save by the force of arms, and those that adhered to the platform and principles of the SLP and sought to attain their ends by intelligent political action. "The seceding members formed what has become known to the world as the North American Branch of the International Workingmen's Association modeled in a measure after the original International founded by Karl Marx, of which original organization there were among them several members. "They accepted the doctrine "that the end justified the means," and in the earlier stages of their existence openly advocated the use of violence as the only means of attaining their ends, ridiculing the ballot as a delusion and a snare." Willey reported that their union organizing activities were so successful that: "The people of the coast, particularly the producing classes, were worked up into a state of agitation that caused the powers that be grave alarm, and it was only after the most persistent efforts that they succeeded in "flagging" the people from off the true course. Paid emissaries and stool-pigeons succeeded in diverting the attention of the masses again to the Chinese, and we had a rehash of 1878 upon a smaller scale, with the exception that the political bosses did not lose control of the movement, but simply castrated it by a non-political resolution and left it to die a natural death, the anti-political characteristic of the I.W.A. preventing it from making any effort to save the movement, as well as the fact that it had been diverted from its original purpose, it was probably not considered worth the saving." Willey went on to describe an 1886 convention of the I.W.A. in San Francisco, during which, "Their policy of violence was abandoned and became one of agitation only." As a result of that and other factors, the organization ... ... "fell to pieces, and of a magnificent organization, extending throughout several States and Territories, and numbering within its ranks men of the brightest minds and most unselfish devotion, there remains but the broken shadow; but no power on earth can destroy the work they have accomplished." Long discussions then took place within the organization on the subjects of anarchy and on cooperative labor and enterprises, though the latter debates did not take place without wrath and bitterness. Willey continued: ... "I may safely state that the condition of the movement on this coast ... has reached that stage of development which recognizes the wisdom and correctness of the SLP, and realizes that future progress and emancipation of the producing classes can only be accomplished by intelligent political action, and that the ballot and not the bullet is the correct arbitrator to appeal to in the United States. ... "A minority, a very small minority, of the anarchistic school, still hold that the ballot is futile, but they are becoming fewer daily. ... "And men who a few years ago were ready to hang a damned Socialist, to-day recognize in him a well-meaning but irrational man; quite an improvement, all things considered, and argues well for the future." An article in the same June 9, 1888 edition argued against Bakunin and his disciple Johann Most, claiming that anarchy betrayed bossism. The June 16, 1888 edition contained a synopsis of an interesting speech delivered in Boston by an unidentified speaker: "It is ordinarily supposed that socialism and anarchism are antagonistic to one another, and that they signify the advocacy of tendencies diametrically opposite, namely, that socialism means the extension of government over and into every department of civilized life, while anarchism is supposed to signify the utter abolition of all government. The fact is that extremes have their opposites, and accordingly extreme State socialism and revolutionary and plotting and aggressive anarchism are opposites and implacable antagonists. Theories have their originators and advocates, and the theory of extreme and rigid State socialism, as well as its opposite theory of revolutionary and aggressive anarchism, bear the unmistakable stamp of certain human dispositions and temperaments. Lingg {one of the Haymarket defendants}, while secretly employed in the construction of dynamite bombs in Chicago, called himself an anarchist and, to judge from his avowed statements, honestly believed in inaugurating what he called the industrial revolution, or the irrepressible conflict. On the other hand, the extreme State socialist proclaims his intention to bring about a radical change, and, to use his words, peaceably if he can and forcibly if he must, and accordingly the State socialists in Chicago several years ago formed themselves into military companies so as to be prepared in case of an emergency. So we find that neither have abandoned the idea of using physical force. There are, however, in the main, two classes of socialists, which might not improperly be distinguished as Chicago anarchists and Boston anarchists, and as Chicago socialists and Boston socialists. The peaceable Boston anarchist is a man, or a woman, who requires no law to govern him or her, and, in that sense, the Boston socialist is an anarchist. On the other hand, the peaceable Boston socialist teaches that the best interests of all require that men should learn to co-operate intelligently, voluntarily and harmoniously, and in that sense the Boston anarchist is a socialist." The July 21, 1888 edition contained many articles about the repressive nature of the Anti-Socialist law in Germany. The August 18, 1888 edition contained an article by the anarchist Kropotkin. Lucien Sanial, who became editor of the WA shortly after the 1889 split, was announced in the September 1, 1888 edition as speaking at the Labor Lyceum on the subject of slavery. The October 6, 1888 edition ran an article by "Rinctum" on "Anarchism vs. State Socialism". The Boston anarchist paper called "Liberty" was reviewed. The November 24, 1888 edition noted that the "Volkszeitung" was mourning the collapse of the labor movement. Its "New York Notes" column reported that: "Anarchists of the Bogert, Finkelstone, Braunschweig, Weinstein, Bothner complexions are out in a howl against the Socialists." The December 15, 1888 edition noted that the Foster-Wischnewetzky matter had been decided in favor of the NEC; Professor Garside was on a propaganda tour for the Party; and the first Nationalist clubs were being organized. Subsequent issues reported the content of some Nationalist club speeches. The same edition carried a call for a general vote of the membership on the following sectarian and Lassallean platform proposals: "Resolved, That faithful allegiance to the Socialist Labor Party and severance of all connection with other political parties shall be a condition of membership in the Socialist Labor Party, all other parties being considered as forming one reactionary mass." This Lassallean "one reactionary mass" phrase had already been criticized by Marx in his "Critique of the Gotha Program" and elsewhere as being very limited in its application and generally should not have been used in socialist propaganda. In a subsequent edition, it was reported that the Resolution passed by a 7-1 ratio in the general vote. The December 29, 1888 edition contained an article on 'Anarchism vs. Socialism' written by Ambrose Bierce of the San Francisco Examiner.1889 In many 1889 editions, the debate between anarchism and socialism intensified substantially. Anarchism and violence were rejected in the lead article of February 2, 1889, and the whole February 16 front page was devoted to letters on the subjects of socialism and anarchism. A February 23 article accused anarchists of wanting to use force, as opposed to the alleged socialist sentiment. In the March 2, 1889 edition, Wm. Willey of Section San Francisco waxed philosophically about the path that the Party had blazed: ... "it is about time that the socialists stopped sacrificing themselves for the benefit of others, in building up other organization, to the detriment of their own and the movement for which they are organized to advance. "For years they have been devoting their time and labor in forming trades unions and labor federations, invariably in the end to find the door shut in their face, with but few, very few exceptions. "In pursuing this course, and from their activity in aiding, organizing and directing strikes, they have rendered themselves unpopular, and at the same time never, never been free from the doubt and suspicion of the very ones they were endeavoring to assist, notwithstanding the fact that they have proved their truth again and again, upon the scaffold, and some of their best men lie rotting in dungeons all over the civilized world to-day. "And all for what? Because we have adopted the mistaken method of arraying ourselves as a class party, and appealing to class prejudices, while in reality we contemplate injuring no one, but are laboring for the advancement of all humanity. Do we not stand ready to accord to even the most degraded beast of a brutalized capitalist the best enjoyments of life, liberty and happiness, as readily as we would accord the same to the most honest horny-handed son of toil that ever lived? Do we not wish to assure him pleasures and enjoyments far beyond the present power of his ill-gotten wealth, even though it were ten times that of a Rothschild, in perfect peace and safety, free forever from the fear of want, yes, and his children after him, and his children's children, on to the very end of or the duration of the human race? ... "The socialists of San Francisco, as in every other part of the world, have organized trades union after trades union, Knights of Labor Assembly after assembly, etc., on the most liberal and advanced ideas, only in the end to find them become conservative and selfish, jealously guarding their own petty interests. Has not our method said to our purpose in this work, 'thou fool?' Could we reasonably expect anything else? Does not that system of organization lead invariably to that very end? ... "Had the time, labor and energy that has been spent in building up other organizations but been devoted for doing that for the SLP, it would have made that party by now felt and respected throughout the length and breadth of this land, and never have drawn us into discreditable complications." Mr. Willey went on to propose seven measures by which the Party would isolate itself, withdraw from its fraternizing and organizing activities, and instead become more devoted to propagandizing "pure socialism". An editorial also pushed 'the interests of the Party' to the forefront, and affirmed Willey's ideas: ... "The recent experience of the San Francisco Socialists ... is but a repetition of many such experiences in various cities, and his conclusions are the same as those of many faithful workers in our Party. "It is undeniably true that many labor organizations ... have been brought into existence by the devoted efforts of Socialists; and the fact that they have proven anything rather than beneficial only goes to show that the mere organization of workingmen into trades unions is not sufficient for their ultimate emancipation ... the main question with them becomes the wage question - how much of their product shall they have for their share? - thus acknowledging the wage system and private capitalism as permanent institutions. They will even go so far as to antagonize each other when their personal interest is involved. Socialists ... are drawn into the vortex of small contentions. "Each one, then, must decide for himself as to "first things." Either he is a Socialist first or he is something else first. ... ... "our Party interests should be first considerations; not because they are our Party interests, but because, if we really believe what we profess, they are paramount considerations." The reader may recall that Marx criticized some socialists for using that exact phrase - "acknowledging the wage system". The call to the members to withdraw from external activities reflected a sectarian trend in the Party. The lead article of March 9, 1889 made interesting contrasts between anarchism and socialism: "Some years ago those radical people now known as anarchists were members of socialistic societies. They withdrew, claiming superior and more advanced doctrines. Their attempt to retain the title "socialist" is no credit to them, but is a confession of the failure of their secession, and evinces a desire to preserve their identity with the original school. Their attitude confuses the public mind in regard to both socialistic and anarchistic doctrines. "Distinct and frequent statement of this difference of doctrine should eventually silence those who, from ignorance or malice, confuse the two schools. "Anarchists would abolish both law and personal rulers - an impossibility. "Anarchy" signifies absence of personal despots or monarchs, but not absence of law, strictly speaking, nor government of law. In this exact meaning a democracy is an anarchy. ... "Nor do anarchists actually believe the negation of law a possibility. They believe natural law will spontaneously assert itself in the absence of statute laws, which hypothesis is absolutely without verification. But they themselves are divided, one party deciding that natural law will establish individual ownership of all wealth, public and private; the other, that natural law will destroy all ownership. The anarchist who advocates either is heretical, for he must determine scientifically, if possible, what natural law will actually produce after the State is abolished and abide by it. When it is declared that each of these two opposites, extreme individualism and communism, will be the natural product, how can anarchists expect converts? ... "The cause of social evils lies not in authority nor elected rulers, but in a false system of ownership which was accepted by all people and therefore made law. The cheapest remedy is to convince the majority that such laws are wrong, and that majority will change the laws. This method is possible under law, and impossible under absolute monarchs. ... "Advocates of force in agitation usually assume that the producer is robbed by superior force wielded by the State in behalf of the robber; but such is not the fact. The slave approves the method, such as monopoly of land, production, etc., by which he is enslaved, and aspires to become himself a tyrant; the case becomes complex, and ordinary methods of emancipation are unsuitable. Urging men to get arms with which to overthrow that which they approve is not wisely directed effort. Condemnation of the ballot is therefore premature, because it has not been used against a monopoly by a majority. A preliminary reform must be the secret ballot, which even the conservative now declare to be desirable. "Certain anarchists predict conflicts between the laborers and the State. Socialists hold that this gift of prophecy is of no value in any cause, for no man will arm who does not demand the changes which, it is alleged, will necessitate the conflict, and who still uses the ballot. "Talk of violence draws attention from reform and is so damaging to a cause that the more unreasonably violent agitators may be regarded as employees of monopolists. "The majority of voters now live under the system they desire, and vote to retain. All their demands for change conform to that system. They refuse to tolerate those who sanction its destruction. Suppose, anarchy attained, a community has adopted the forms it desires. Will it tolerate those who insist that those forms be abolished by force? "Under democracy all reforms can be urged without arousing antagonism, which always destroys the leaven of reform, thus retarding progress. ... "The socialist believes reform consists of successive steps in progress; the anarchist believes reform is destruction followed by spontaneous growth. "The anarchist believes the laborer must oppose the monopolist and the State with arms because the State is armed. The socialist believes the laborer and the State must oppose the monopolists; the laborer need not arm, for his ally, the State, is armed. OBSERVER" My ally, the state? In spite of the optimism, the article contained several items of pertinence to the present situation, such as anarchists confusing the lower classes by calling themselves socialists; anarchists wishing to abolish capitalist law, which was straight out of De Leon's later teachings; and their advocacy of force. In the same edition, Zeno complained about Professor Garside. In the March 16, 1889 edition, it was reported that the police captain who allegedly created evidence used to hang the Chicago Haymarket defendants had "written a book - or has had it written to order". One of his associates also charged him with: ... "using public money to reorganize the "anarchist" groups for the purpose of keeping up the "anarchist" scare, and to make a "boom" for himself ... by discovering these detective-made groups and arresting the poor foolish cranks who were roped into them." Clever guy. Provocation seems to be an age-old technique. In the same edition, an article from Professor Garside, still on tour, welcomed Jews into the socialist movement. In the April 6, 1889 edition, Rabbi Schindler denounced the Jewish language and socialism. The April 13, 1889 edition reported that the Chicago socialists had 'dislodged' an alleged anarchist "United Labor Party"; an answer to Rabbi Schindler's attacks by Michael Cohn of Boston was printed; and an editorial discussed some theoretical limitations on the value of the ballot. The May 4, 1889 edition quoted some New York Volkszeitung allegations that anarchists were masquerading as socialists. Another long article by Sanial on 'Land and Machinery' was included. An editorial brought up the debate about changing the name of the Workmen's Advocate to "The Socialist", presumably to match the name of the Party's German-language paper. The May 11, 1889 edition reported the arrival of a new journal called "The Nationalist", encouraged by enthusiasm over Bellamy's book, "Looking Backward". The May 18, 1889 edition reported disturbances of socialist gatherings by anarchists. The May 23, 1889 edition reported on Professor Garside's shortcomings as a lecturer, alleged a connection between Garside and Johann Most, further alleged that he had also swindled other members out of some money, and then announced that he had been fired. The June 22 edition reported that anarchists raided a Section meeting in Chicago. The July 20, 1889 edition advertised a De Leon speech on Nationalism at the Labor Lyceum. It included another article by Sanial. The July 27, 1889 edition contained an interesting retrospective on the First International, and called for creating a Jewish worker's journal. The August 3, 1889 edition reported on a Congress of the Second International in France, and included a synopsis of a speech by Professor De Leon of Columbia University, excerpted herewith: "Nationalists look upon government not as an oppressive force, as an institution foreign to the people, but as emanating from the people. It is the very self of the nation. Nationalists, therefore, deem it necessary, and demand that all industries shall be of national organization, because these are the people's interests, and, consequently, the concerns of the government." But, 16 years later, in De Leon's "Socialist Reconstruction of Society", we were told that 'the state has no interest in production', a statement which clearly contradicted his philosophy in this WA report. On page 35 of "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism", A.P. quoted De Leon as having written in 1905: 'Congress ... can have no trace of a purpose to administer production.' Could 'conditions' have changed so much in sixteen years to have warranted such a drastic change in attitude toward control of production by the state? Remember that the SLP defined the state as little more than Congress, and certainly not the agencies of force. The synopsis of De Leon's speech continued: "We are not, like the anarchists, opposed to all government, but we are opposed to the present industrial system, that accrues to the profit of the few. "The individual owes duties to the government, but the government owes greater duties to the individual. "The Nationalists demand, first, the right to the opportunities of labor and security for all the result of it; second, assurance of promotion; the gratification of laudable aspiration; the sense of honor; third, pensions for the disabled by accident or old age. This right all are entitled to who have worked and thus contributed to the wealth of the people, just as the soldier who is ready to sacrifice his life for his country is entitled to a pension when old or disabled. "We demand certainty of position for all. At present the poor and the sick succumb. By nationalizing the industries poverty will be abolished and sickness will be relieved. "We recognize the laws of exchange of values, and propose to establish a government composed of representatives of trades unions. The present barbaric competitive system must go, and with it the accursed system of wage slavery. What we are aiming at is Socialism, although we have another name for it, simply because the name must be adjusted to the history of the country. Our "democrats" do not call themselves Progressists, as in Spain; neither do our Free Traders call themselves Liberals, as in England." Note that the Nationalist proposal "to establish a government composed of representatives of trades unions" was quite consistent with Douai's 1887 vision, and with SLP philosophy after the anarchists took over in 1889. That basic idea later evolved into Socialist Industrial Unionism. J. F. Busche reported on August 10, 1889 that the Congress of the Second International in France had tossed out the anarchists. It was also reported that what was left of the Henry George movement in the USA had split in two. Also, the conflict within the SLP finally made it into the WA: 50 charges, on six different subjects, were brought up against the whole National Executive Committee, but were aimed mostly against Rosenberg, Gerecke and Hintze by the "Central Committee of the New York German Section". The three individuals were accused of adhering to "the socialistic political policy decided upon by the party last year, as against the trades union economical policy advocated by the New York Volkszeitung, and supported by the majority of the Executive at that time." ... 'The charges were aimed against the minority of the Executive.' The NEC was also charged with being 'too German'. Also, Sherlie Woodman, from a Chicago Section, wrote an anti-physical force letter asking the Party to take a clearer stand on the subject of anarchism vs. socialism, and asked for an explanation of some disturbing incidents: "The co-operation of the German Section of the Socialist Labor Party of this city with the Arbeiter Bund and well-known anarchists in holding the picnic in celebration of the fall of the Bastille; the recent speeches at Cooper Institute in commemoration of the French Revolution, particularly that of Hugh O. Pentecost, in which the miners of Braidwood were actually censured for not throwing bricks and breaking windows; and the recent publication in the ADVOCATE of a poem glorifying the red flag. ... "Of what use is it for us to be asserting that we believe in and unceasingly advocate peaceful and legitimate propaganda, that we aim to convince intelligent men of the justice of our cause, not to influence the passions of the ignorant rabble, that we discountenance all attempts to right industrial wrongs by means of physical force, that we believe in education and evolution as affording the only safe and sure solutions of present economic problems - of what use, I say, is it for us to continually make such assertions, when our auditors will simply smile contemptuously and refer to the well-known acts and public expressions of those who stand forth as representatives of our party, which practically refute all our statements? "It is time to call a halt. If our position is not sustained by the party, we want to know it, that we may govern ourselves accordingly. We decline to occupy our very equivocal position any longer. Let the matter be put to a party vote, as to whether the peace policy or the revolutionary policy is to predominate; if the former, let it be strictly enforced; if the latter, our efforts and influence may be transferred to some other organization, whose principles and methods are more in harmony with our own." Mutiny was threatened there. The mutiny of those who did not want to join the efforts to "influence the passions of the ignorant rabble", but who would rather "convince intelligent men of the justice of our cause". Called for as well was clarity on whether the Party was to advocate 'the peace policy or the revolutionary policy'. The August 17, 1889 edition announced the preparation of an anti-anarchist leaflet. As the result of a critique of the SLP platform by a single member, an editorial contrasted the post-revolutionary distribution of labor's product under both Socialism and Communism: "1. Communism binds its followers to the principle of equal distribution, regardless of the quantity or quality of labor. "2. Socialism admits quantity and quality as factors of distribution; providing, however, for all cases of disability, and relying upon the abundance of production and the elevation of the race under its system for a rapid reduction of the differential power of those factors." The August 24 edition reported that the Party had been criticized at the Paris congress for having taken a 'pure and simple political stand'. Another Lyceum lecture by De Leon was announced. The September 7, 1889 edition reported that the treasurer failed to pay the wages of the Party's printers, and that all subsequent payments should be sent to the Secretary of the NEC instead of to the Treasurer. In a long editorial in the same issue, entitled "Incidents of Evolution", the conflict between the political and the trade union advocates escalated to new extremes, as the following excerpts from Rosenberg's political faction demonstrated: "No, the men of the Socialist Party {SLP} have not earned the name of narrow-minded sectarians in the past, nor will they at this time earn the name of imbeciles. The incidents of the social evolution are not lost upon the ever progressing spirit of the Socialist Party, and its members gave evidence of this when they voted by an overwhelming majority to constitute themselves an independent political party. "Of course, there were exceptions. What victorious army was ever devoid of stragglers? What gallantly fighting trades union has not had its quota of "scabs"? What progressive party has not had its reactionaries, its timid time-servers? "So, now there are evidently those who would go back to worn-out methods. As if that were possible! It should be with pity, more than anger, that the staunch Socialists should view the frightful hesitancy of their weaker comrades, who either have not the courage of their convictions or have not comprehended the duties of the hour; who do not seem to know that the way to emancipation from capitalism lies not through the now puerile efforts of extrapolitical organizations without legal standing or power; organizations whose constituents are being gradually degraded by the evolution in mechanics which, under the continuing wage system, transfers the powers that once emanated from the skilled workman's cunning to the owners of machinery. ... ... "trades unions are not political organizations, and as long as expediency demands their existence, it is not probable that they will be. "Thus, there can be no antagonism between the Socialist Party and the economic associations ... The workers have everything to gain by the consummation of the objects of the Socialist Party, and it is for this reason that it is in that sense a labor party. And if, in the course of time, any artificial antagonism shall be inaugurated against the Party's tactics, that may be considered as much an incident of evolution as the inevitable discomfiture of the senseless antagonists. "Bahn frie!"" Lots of abuse was heaped on Rosenberg's opponents, and many passages denied any ground for conflict between the SLP and the unions. In the same September 7 edition, in what appears to have been a desperate attempt to win support, the City Committee invited two delegates from each labor organization to a convention to consider labor laws: "In view of the many failures which have attended the attempts of workmen's organizations to permanently organize politically for the benefit of their class, the Socialist Labor Party, whose platform emphasizes the emancipation of labor, has determined to attempt the organization of a political movement, offering the services of their established organization to that end, and thus guarding against the fate of former movements." The labor laws to be considered included the 8-hour working day, prohibition of female labor in industries injurious to females, prohibition of child labor, prohibition of night labor, a 36 hour period of leisure time per week, state inspection of factories, and others. It continued: "In extending this invitation to you, we assure you that it shall be our endeavor to make this convention thoroughly democratic, and no attempt on the part of political heelers and anarchists to manipulate the convention for personal ends will be tolerated. No delegates who are known to be connected with the old political parties or anarchist groups will be recognized. "Whatever laws may be decided upon by this convention, the SLP offer the facilities of its organization as a proper means of enacting such laws through pledged candidates if elected." It was also reported that, at a meeting of the German and Jewish Sections of the City, the vote to recall or withdraw four 'politically'-minded members of the NEC had been judged to be illegal by the American Section, so the vote on the recall had been boycotted by the latter. It was alleged that the correct procedure would have involved submitting the charges to the Board of Supervision for their investigation and determination. It was then further alleged that the German and Jewish Sections proceeded to illegally elect four new members to the NEC, minus any participation by the American Section. A notice from the Board of Supervision upheld the complaint of the American Section and officially repudiated the actions of the German and Jewish Sections. The next edition of September 14, 1889 suggested a dual-power situation at the Party printery by bearing an extra-large overstamp, at right angles to the regular print, over the latest decision of the newly reconstituted NEC, reading: "EVIDENCE OF THE CRIME". That decision of the new NEC announced that a meeting of all of the City Sections met and withdrew the four NEC members ... "in consequence of the policy pursued by the majority of the Executive Board, which consisted in systematically antagonizing economic trades and labor organizations, maliciously opposing the eight-hour movement, inaugurated by the American Federation of Labor and constantly attacking in the party organs other labor organizations, individuals and labor papers to the detriment of the party and the cause of Socialism in this country. "The result of this narrowminded and sectarian policy which voiced not the sentiment of the Socialists, but only the aspirations of a small clique numbering not more than twelve or fifteen men, was that even such progressive bodies of organized labor as the Central Labor Federation of this city became disgusted with what was represented to them to be the Socialistic Labor Party. ... "The present issue of the Workmen's Advocate has been prepared under the supervision of the former Executive Committee and the undersigned {the new NEC} are therefore not responsible for it." With the eventual takeover of the Party press by the new element, the the "ic" was restored to the Socialistic Labor Party name. The "ic" appendage had been absent from the SLP name for almost two years, but its anomalous reappearance must only have been a flash in the pan, as it did not recur in subsequent editions. I bring this matter up only because other Party literature claimed that the dropping of the "ic" represented one of the improvements inaugurated by the new administration. The lead article of the next edition (September 21, 1889) summarized some of the recently experienced internal difficulties. The new Executive denied that the "present trouble" arose from any differences in principle, nor that they opposed political action. The "substance of the remarks" of S. E. Schewitsch, the new spokesperson for the NEC, was quoted: "The present trouble does not arise from any differences of principle. It has been falsely charged that the majority of the New York members are opposed to political action of the party. There is no such opposition. We all know that the social problem cannot be solved by economic action; but we know also that political action is likewise but one means of working for our aims. "It is alleged that it was the Volkszeitung party which opposed the deposed Executive Committee. That is absurd. Those who agree, as well as those who disagree with the Volkszeitung in many respects are agreed in their determination that the imbecile management of the party as it was conducted by the old Executive had to be stopped. "The conduct of Der Sozialist was apt to disgrace the party and make it ridiculous. While Marx's Communist Manifesto pronounced it 'the policy of the Socialist Party,' we are not doctrinaires who say to the world, 'Here is the truth, here kneel down; we only show humanity that it is striving and what it is striving for.' Der Sozialist has in its every article, its every line and every word been permeated by the dogma, 'Here alone is truth; all must kneel down before us.' The old Executive narrowed down our movement from a proletarian class movement to a sect. "This was especially apparent in the attitude of Der Sozialist toward the eight-hour movement. In the issue of Dec. 29, 1888, the paper says: 'We are cool unto our heart against this movement, as we cannot lend our hand to the possible loss of the subsistence of many of our members.'" Many more faults in the conduct of the Party journals were then enumerated. The next column stated that "the mode of election of the new Executive ... was perfectly legal." It continued: "Comrade Schevitsch reported the steps taken by the new officers. The old officers had threatened to resist by violence any attempt to remove them from their posts. Busche had even threatened to use fire-arms. To avoid any trouble, the committee had simply locked the doors and refused admittance to the old officers. Comrade B. J. Gretch was appointed secretary, Lucien Sanial, editor of the WORKMEN'S ADVOCATE, and K. Ibsen temporary editor of Der Sozialist." Opponents of the coup argued that the proceedings were illegal, but the new party line on the take-over was adopted by a vote of 163 for, to 7 against. The old leadership was denounced, and the deposing of the old leadership was declared perfectly legal. The statement read, in part: ... "the American Section, on an untenable technicality, refused to hear the report of the Committee of the German Section, or to respond to the call of the German and Jewish Sections (nine tenths of the New York members) for a joint meeting. "To that purpose, the City Committee had to refuse illegally to place the motion of the German Section for withdrawal and new election of Executive on the order of business, by which refusal three representatives of the German Section who voted for it acted in defiance of their constituents. "To that purpose, the City Committee had to make the illegal attempt of forcing upon the joint meeting an arbitrary method of proceeding; i.e., the institution of a new investigation. "To that purpose, the few friends of the four retired officers had to claim over and over again that they were not acquainted with the charges, although they had themselves frequently heard them detailed and discussed. "5. According to the constitution, as well as to the decision of the Board of Supervision, the joint meeting had power to withdraw members of the Executive and fill the vacancies; for the City Committee was bound to place upon the order of business the motion of the German Section, else that committee would have arbitrary power of preventing any action of any joint meeting unsatisfactory to it. "The City Committee having illegally named an arbitrary order of business, the joint meeting had the right to take up for action the motion of the German Section." ... At another meeting, it was reported that the American Section of New York adopted, 23 for, to 6 against ... ... "a resolution declaring the action of the joint meeting illegal, whereby the German and Jewish Sections have placed themselves outside of the party, and cannot be recognized any longer as belonging to the party." In the same September 21 edition, the Board of Supervision adopted a resolution to ... "take possession of the property of the party" ... suspend any previous or post-coup members of the NEC or Editors of Party journals, the Board to supervise all major Party activities. The WA also promised to report "The only true, honest, and unbiased accounts of the proceedings of organized labor in this city." In the September 28, 1889 edition, the Board of Supervision noted some irregularities in the behavior of the old Executive, who were behaving as though they had not been suspended, but expressed intentions to carry on with a Sept. 28 Party convention that had been scheduled previous to the coup. The Board in the meantime decided to move the date to Oct. 12 to give the conflict time to simmer down. Also, the old Executive did not hand over all the Party property to the Board of Supervision as ordered, seemingly in refusal to recognize the authority of the Board. In the same Sept. 28 edition, the long-pursued 'controversy' between De Leon and Sorge appeared in the form of an exchange of five letters between an anonymous 'Nationalist' and an equally anonymous 'Socialist':"SOCIALISM OR NATIONALISM? "The following extracts from five letters exchanged between an adherent of Nationalism and an old Socialist may prove interesting to our readers. We submit them to-day without comment, expecting that they will elicit timely criticism, and reserving for a future issue the expression of such views as we may personally entertain upon the subject. - ED. "Nationalist to Socialist - I am instructed by this Club to take measures looking to the formation of a similar club in your city, where, it is believed, there is good material for a strong and influential organization. Your name has been given to me as one whose earnest and intelligent interest in the burning question of our day may induce him to help us in the work now before us. Trusting, therefore, that your convictions may allow you to give the Nationalist movement the aid of your valuable co-operation, I beg to inquire whether you would be willing to join in the formation of a club in your city, and to furnish me with the names of such other persons, men and women, as you may judge suitable. Very respectfully, etc. "N. B. - The Nationalist platform is printed on the back of this. "Socialist to Nationalist - In reply to your kind invitation, allow me to state that I am unwilling to embark on a new road, i.e., to relinquish Socialism for Nationalism. As to furnishing you with names, etc., I am hardly able to give any, since almost all my political connections are with working men and women within the ranks of Labor. The 'conversion of the cultured and conservative classes' has never been an article of my faith, because, in the words of Karl Marx, 'The emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves.' Yours, etc. "N. to S. - I reply to yours of the - , not for the purpose of pressing the invitation contained in mine of the - , to which yours is an answer, but because as a Socialist I feel I may not leave unanswered the views you seem to impute to Socialism, and which, to my knowledge, are mistaken. "You declare your 'unwillingness to relinquish Socialism for Nationalism..' Considering that Nationalism is Socialism, your position would be that you prefer the name to the thing. Socialist philosophy teaches us, on the contrary, to disengage ourselves of vanity; to aspire after the thing and not the shadow; and when the thing is no less than the redemption of the human race, to take hold of whatever instrument presents itself that may accomplish its (Socialism's) ideal. So long as a Socialist cannot but admit that Nationalism upholds every vital principle he upholds, he cannot claim that to aid Nationalism would be to relinquish Socialism. "You declare your inability to furnish me with names favorable to Nationalism, on the ground that 'all your connections are with workingmen and women within the ranks of labor,' and that it is 'no article of your faith to look for the conversion of the cultured and conservative classes,' and you quote in your support the well known but generally misquoted phrase from Karl Marx. In this again your position is hostile to Socialism, and to express teachings of the very man you seem to believe in. "Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle and the rest of Socialist philosophers have ever maintained that all labor that society needs is labor and honorable. They have denied that only the manual is labor. They have again and again insisted upon the sacredness and brotherhood of all labor, upon die Arbeit und die Wissenschaft, and they never placed labor, because cultured, out of the ranks of labor. Their language is one which cannot be twisted into an assertion that the 'cultured classes' are not wanted, or are useless, or are outside the ranks of labor. From what class, I pray you, came Marx and Lassalle? From what class is the Russian nobleman, Sergius E. Schevitsch, or Laurence Gronlund, or Walter Vrooman {Party speakers, writers and/or NEC members}, in this country; or Liebknecht, Bebel, or Viereck, who are fighting for Socialism and the rights of man in Germany? "Views like those you express it is that have kept Socialism back in America; and it is the sound, humane, scientific creed of Socialism that Nationalism upholds, consecrating all useful work alike, and the rights of man as man, conscious that a lasting success is impossible, where only the 'workmen' (in the sense in which you use it) are concerned, without taking into account the workmen from the cultured classes as well. "The article of your creed, allow me to state it frankly, is not Socialism at all. It is class prejudice. The sun that is to rise cannot shine on that. Nor is your creed shared by the 'workingmen and women' to any great extent. "I am put down to lecture on the 'Relation of Mental to Manual Service under Nationalism.' I propose to take your letter along and read it there (without, of course, mentioning your name), and use it for a text to illustrate just the reverse of what Socialism and Nationalism teach. "The 'uncultured workman' who drove the nails into the Brooklyn Bridge deserves his full and equal share with every one who contributed to rear that noble structure. But the 'cultured engineer' who planned that structure, and calculated to a nicety where every nail should go, is equally entitled to honor, consideration and a living. According to the articles of your faith, however, Roebling would not be within the ranks of labor. That is not Socialism, and, therefore, not Nationalism either. "Let this be said in all friendliness and good nature. As you call yourself a Socialist, I shall look upon you, whether you want it or no, as a brother, for whom I shall work all the same, and I sincerely sign myself, yours fraternally, etc. "S. to N. - To answer it (your letter) entirely I would have to write a pamphlet. I will touch only the most important points, after quoting your words: "'Considering that Nationalism is Socialism,' is simply an assertion. Socialism covers the race, and is never national. "'You prefer the name to the thing.' No! No! I do not ask for an apple when I want a pear. I do not write to Henry George when I wish to address you. I do not call white what is black. "'So long as a Socialist cannot but admit that Nationalism upholds every vital principle he upholds.' Now, under the penalty and running the risk of being read by you out of the ranks of Socialists, I deny that assumption. The vital principle of Socialism is the substitution of common property for private property, in the first place, of all means of production. Your declaration of principles says nothing about that, and if you should insinuate that your paragraph 6 aimed substantially at the same thing, so much the worse for the framers of your declaration of principles not daring to tell the truth in plain unmistakable words. The first paragraph of your declaration of principles is false in every respect. The Socialist does not know any 'eternal truth,' much less one governing the 'world's progress.' This whole paragraph, as well as the greater number of those following it, are commonplace phrases of middle-class philanthropists. Socialists, having studied, and studying, the economic evolution of society, could not be guilty of uttering such empty declamations. When you attack the declaration about my connections, I must request you to quote correctly. My words were: 'almost all my political connections.' The underlined words are left out in your quotation. The whole of your really fine editorial, or literary effort, in the next two or three pages of your letter is directed against something I never said or implied. Men or women, working with pen or plow, with brain or muscle, are working men and women, and I have made no distinction between mental and manual labor, thus missing the opportunity of receiving a wholesome lesson from the adherents of 'the sound, humane, scientific creed of Socialism that Nationalism upholds.' "You speak of 'the article of your creed.' But, my dear sir, I have no article of creed, and therefore could not give any in my letter. I said: 'It is no article of my faith,' and then quoted a part of a letter of Mr. Bellamy, page 17 of the first number of the Nationalist (May, 1889), which you do not seem to know. A socialist organization directing its efforts, 'particularly to the conversion of the cultured and conservative classes,' is a rather novel affair. Perhaps this is the real genuine Nationalism. "Your intention to use my letter as a text for your lecture is heartily endorsed by me, though I am unable to attend, and I request you not to suppress my name. Give the letter and the name in full. Nor have I the least objection against your reading and using even this pre-sent letter at the same time and place. I thank you for the concluding sentence of your letter: 'I shall look upon you, whether you want it or no, as a brother.' As for myself, I am unable to take Schiller's words literally, seit umschlungen, Millionen, and will consider and treat as brethren only those who act brotherly. "You are what we call 'Ein Gefühls-sozialist,' {sentimental socialist} and I hope that in a few years you will see the errors of Nationalism as seen by yours sincerely for the cause of labor. "N. to S. - As I can accept neither the correctness of any material allegations of fact you make, nor the soundness of any important conclusions you draw, and as one and the other are offered by you in a temper very much savoring of ingrain prejudice and dogmatism, there remains naught for me to do but what civility dictates: to acknowledge receipt of your obliging favor of the - , and to subscribe myself, yours sincerely, for the cause of human progress." There it is, uncut and unexpurgated, with one typo corrected. Schiller's words, "seit umschlungen, Millionen", from my own weak translation of the German, seems to imply that we are all brothers and sisters due to the entanglement of the genetic material. De Leon's equating of Nationalism - the nationalization of ownership of industries - with socialism seems to contradict his 'abolition of the state' philosophy of 16 years later. But, as we saw with A.P. as well, it's all a matter of definition, or redefinition. By De Leon's own definition given in the report of his speech in the WA of August 3, 1889, it would appear that he favored the nationalization of all industries, or state ownership of industries, but nowhere was the class content of that state made clear. By default, could it have been anything other than the capitalist state, or 'the state as such'? More research would have to be done, but it's hard to imagine De Leon at any time having advocated concentrating the ownership of the means of production into a workers' state, as advocated by Marx and Engels in their "Communist Manifesto". The October 5, 1889 edition reported a decision to go ahead with a Party Congress in Chicago on Oct. 12. The proposed order of business included revisions to both the Party platform and its Constitution, and elections of a new Executive and Board of Supervision. In the meantime, since no legal Executive existed within the Party, the suspension of the Executive was repealed by the Board of Supervision. In an editorial, it was stated that: "We shall simply observe that for all practical purposes the party in New York is now a unit, and ready to do better work than it has ever done. The opposition is insignificant in numbers and absolutely without influence. Moreover, by completely isolating itself from the party - by actually casting itself out of the party - it has lost the power of disturbance which it would otherwise have continued to possess." Anarchists 1, reformers 0. The Party was reported to be reconstituting itself with energy and enthusiasm. It was also reported that the Rosenberg faction held its own little convention in Chicago, on September 28 as originally scheduled, in which they resolved to regain possession of Party property, even if it should be necessary to appeal to a court of law. The same edition also contained an article by De Leon discussing President Madison and natural law. In the October 12, 1889 edition, 27 Socialists answered a call to attend a meeting, 16 of whom had been members of the old New York American Section, the majority of which had followed the old Executive away from the Party. Sanial, new editor of the WA, observed that: "As a body, the majority of the American Section was in open rebellion, and by its failure to elect a delegate to the convention of October 12, which it did not recognize, had disfranchised the minority. As a matter of course, the minority refused to be thus summarily and forcibly carried out of the party. The resolution simply recognized the existing state of affairs. Facts only were stated and provision made accordingly. He had no doubt that in a short time most of those who had hastily followed Rosenberg would return to the party, and they would be received with open arms. The resolution was then adopted unanimously." It was resolved that a "disrupting influence of legally suspended members" of the NEC had caused the Section to rebel; many members of the Section were ready to return to the Party, and New York's American Section should be reorganized by enrolling members and electing officers. It was further resolved to declare the present meeting "a meeting of the American Section". Sanial was also elected delegate of that American Section to the Chicago Convention of October 12, and most of the funds to defray his expenses were raised "on the spot". Neatly done. Sanial was then requested to ... ... "define the position of the party towards Nationalism. "Comrade Southeran thought that we should for the present leave the Nationalists alone, because their movement has not yet taken a definite shape. "Comrade Sanial endorsed this view. "The position of the party towards Nationalism," he said, "should at present be one of silent expectancy. Bellamy's book is apparently the credo of a majority of those - mostly professional men - who are prominently connected with the Nationalist movement. It is a fine book, and calculated to induce thought among a class of people who have not yet studied the question, and who can never understand it fully until, by actual contact with the wage-working people, they have learned considerably more than this book itself can teach them of the tendencies and requirements of their epoch. Its teachings, as you know, are communistic rather than socialistic, and it appeals more to sentiment than to reason. ***** It is well that the professional men, and especially the men of science, should come together and declare to the world that science has been diverted from its true purpose; that it is used for the enslavement of the people instead of being applied to their elevation; and that they cannot and shall not any longer countenance such a brutal system. If this were the object of the Nationalist clubs, we might consider them as trade unions of scientists, a sort of primary organization of intellectual labor, which by placing itself in communication with primary organizations of manual labor, would, through the all-pervading influence of Socialism, advance in the knowledge of social science. ***** We know that it is as a class movement only that Socialism can accomplish the emancipation of labor, and as a party we must go on without concession or compromise. At no time was it so necessary to preserve the integrity of the Socialist Labor Party." "These views were accepted, and it was resolved that the delegate or his substitute shall voice them in the convention. "The delegate was also instructed to propose that paragraph 17 of "Social Demands" {uniform divorce laws + mutual consent divorces} and paragraphs 6 and 7 of "Political Demands" be struck out of the platform." {Uniform law, and separation of church and state.} In the same October 12 edition, Philip Rappaport commented on the De Leon-Sorge (Nationalist-Socialist) debate of the September 28 edition, taking the side of the Nationalist at every turn. To Sorge's quote from Marx that 'The emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves', Rappaport remarked ... "yet this must be taken with a grain of salt", which was typical of the overall poor quality of his response. In an earlier letter to Sorge of February 23, 1889, Engels promised to suggest to Kautsky that Rappaport be eliminated from the columns of Die Neue Zeit (see Appendix 1). An editorial in the October 19 edition stated that the Party was all settled down after its difficulties. A full report of the Chicago Convention filled most of the October 26, 1889 edition of the WA. The Party's assessment of Nationalism was briefly addressed: "The essentially American movement known under the name of "Nationalism," which is in reality nothing else but socialism pure and simple, is the outgrowth of our economic development." In the meantime, the American Section of Chicago remained true to the Rosenberg faction, and was bitter toward the big change in the Party. In an apparent boycott of the official Party, they had not sent a delegate to the Convention. Sanial looked in at their meeting close to the site of the official Convention, and here's what he saw: "T. J. Morgan was then delivering an eloquent lecture on socialism to less than fifty persons, one-half of whom were members of the Section. In the debate that followed considerable ability was displayed by the speakers; and to anyone sufficiently experienced in organization the thought would naturally have occurred that there must be some singular defect in the policy, tactics, or management of the party when, in a city like Chicago and with the excellent material at its command, the American Section could only muster a little band of select people, professional men for the most part. Surely, such speeches as Delegate Sanial heard then and there, if delivered in the right place and to the right people, would soon put a new face on the social movement in the Western Babylon, where capitalistic oppression is heavier, and the lines between classes are more sharply defined, than in any other city on this continent. Why was the light of truth thus confined within the walls of a dingy room in the business quarter of Chicago? Why were apostles of socialism preaching to each other where no one else could hear them, instead of boldly addressing the grimy mechanic and the ragged laborer on some public square, if need be, within easy reach of their hovels? Or were they, perchance, no apostles at all, but cautious persons who feared that by preaching pure socialism where Anarchy - precisely because of their inaction - was making converts, they also might be branded as anarchists, and lose the respect of the "better class?" These and other questions of a like purport Delegate Sanial asked himself, wonderingly, while the debate lasted. The riddle was solved for him before he left the room." Sanial then spoke with members of the Section, many of whom were not of a conciliatory frame of mind, but he nevertheless re-extended an invitation for them to attend the Convention. Sanial also threatened to reorganize the American Section, claiming: "Sections who had been misled into sending representatives to the Rosenberg meeting, whether friendly or hostile, were welcome to a representation in this convention, where they could discuss the legal aspect of the case to their heart's content, if they pleased. Rosenberg himself would be admitted. Nay, under the circumstances, it was the duty of this Section to be represented. By refusing to do so it would, like the New York American Section and the Chicago German Section, place itself outside of the party and compel an immediate reorganization of it, so that the faithful members who happened to be in the minority might not be disfranchised. It was as the delegate of the reorganized American Section of New York that he sat in the convention, and it was as the representatives of the reorganized German Section of Chicago that Comrades Christensen and Grotkau were there also. In both cases, he was glad to say, reorganization meant increased numbers and a better spirit. Many socialists who had for a long time taken no interest in the party because of the imbecility of its managers were now returning, full of activity, of zeal, and of self-sacrificing spirit." Morgan then accused the WA's policies of taking "a violent departure from the principles of socialism." Sanial then ... ... "asked in what respect it could be said that he was failing. ""Why," replied Comrade Morgan, exhibiting a copy of the ADVOCATE and pointing to the weekly reports of the Central Labor Federation and Central Labor Union, "look at this. Is it a socialist or a trade union paper?" "Delegate Sanial was nearly dumb with astonishment. "Do you mean," said he, "that a Socialist paper should give no news of the economic movement, should take no notice whatever of the daily conflict between Labor and Capital?" "Comrade Morgan insisted that such reports should have no place in an organ of the party, or should not, at least, appear on its first page. This declaration made with great vehemence, was received with vigorous applause by all the members present." Sanial returned to the Convention to report on his meeting, and interpreted the above exchange to signify hostility to organized labor on the part of the old Section, but which reconsidered its isolation and appointed a committee ... "to wait upon the convention and make a statement in relation to the position of the Chicago American Section toward Organized Labor." There, Morgan accused Sanial of misrepresenting the views of the Section, and of changing the WA policy on unions before a Congress of the whole Party could vote on it. Morgan also reiterated the view that the WA and the Party had been taken over illegally. The closing paragraph of the Section's Resolution to the Convention read: "We recognize trade unions as a natural effort of the workers to protect themselves from the encroachments of the capitalist, and that it is to the interest of all workers to be members of those organizations, but that, while the Socialist party aids and encourages the trade unions, it shall never be made subordinate to them, or its policy dictated solely in consideration for such organizations, because they are but a small minority of the 65 millions of people who require our attention in the United States." Morgan then stated that the new Party policy "was subordinated to the business interests of the N. Y. Volkszeitung, the Chicago Arbeiter Zeitung and their respective employees." People who write for a Party organ should not also "be allowed to dictate its policy". After rebutting Morgan's arguments, the Convention moved on to other business. The platform was redone, and a few excerpts are in order: "The Socialist Labor Party of the United States, in convention assembled, reasserts the inalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ... "With the founders of this republic we hold, that the true theory of politics is that the machinery of government must be owned and controlled by the whole people; but in the light of our industrial development we hold, furthermore, that the true theory of economics is that the machinery of production must likewise belong to the people in common. "To the obvious fact that our despotic system of economics is the direct opposite of our democratic system of politics, can plainly be traced the existence of a privileged class, the corruption of government by that class, the alienation of public property, public franchises and public functions to that class, and the abject dependence of the mightiest of nations upon that class. "Again, through the perversion of democracy to the ends of plutocracy, labor is robbed of the wealth which it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and, by compulsory idleness in wage-slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life." Take note that the theory that 'labor is robbed of the wealth which it alone produces' was contradicted in the article on socialism and anarchism in the pre-coup edition of March 9, 1889, where it was held that: "Advocates of force in agitation usually assume that the producer is robbed by superior force wielded by the State in behalf of the robber; but such is not the fact." For the new platform to have stated that "our despotic system of economics is the direct opposite of our democratic system of politics" begs the question of why, if our system of politics is democratic, the Party should later have sought to abolish it at the ballot box, or abolish it in any other way. What had changed so drastically in the republic in the previous 16 years that caused De Leon to want to replace the democratic republic with an administration of things? I never read of any monarchist take-over of the state at any time that would have required an extraordinary change of attitude on anyone's part. The new platform continued with statements about the exploitation of labor and the resultant misery of that class. The resolution part of the platform declared, in that same WA of October 26, 1889: "Resolved, that we call upon the people to organize with a view to the substitution of the co-operative commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war and social disorder; a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization. "We call upon them to unite with us in a mighty effort to gain by all practicable means the political power. "In the meantime, and with a view to immediate improvement in the condition of Labor, we present the following "Demands":"SOCIAL DEMANDS. "1. Reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the progress of production. "2. The United States shall obtain possession of the railroads, canals, telegraphs, telephones, and all other means of public transportation and communication. "3. The municipalities to obtain possession of the local railroads, ferries, water works, gas works, electric plants, and all industries requiring municipal franchises. "4. The public lands to be declared inalienable. Revocation of all land grants to corporations or individuals, the conditions of which have not been complied with. "5. Legal incorporation by the States of local Trade Unions which have no national organization. "6. Furthering of workmen's co-operative productive associations by public credit; such associations to be preferred in the placing of contracts for public works. "7. The United States to have the exclusive right to issue money. "8. Congressional legislation providing for the scientific management of forests and waterways, and prohibiting the waste of the natural resources of the country. "9. Inventions to be free to all; the inventors to be remunerated by the nation. "10. Progressive income tax and tax on inheritances; the smaller incomes to be exempt. "11. School education of all children under 14 years of age to be compulsory, gratuitous, and accessible to all by public assistance in meals, clothing, books, etc., where necessary. "12. Repeal of all pauper, tramp, conspiracy, and sumptuary {extravagant spending} laws. Unabridged right of combination. "13. Official statistics concerning the condition of labor. Prohibition of the employment of children of school age and of the employment of female labor in occupations detrimental to health or morality. Abolition of the convict labor contract system. "14. All wages to be paid in lawful money of the United States. Equalization of women's wages with those of men where equal service is performed. "15. Laws for the protection of life and limb in all occupations, and an efficient employers' liability law." Then followed 6 political demands, which also remained very similar to the 1888 version, but they did manage to eliminate the seventh demand for 'separation of church and state'. Since it had only been 20 years since the Commune and the International, clear statements about acquiring political power like those above were fated to remain quite thoroughly ingrained in the consciousness of the membership, and, with any continuity at all, it would take some time before things could be twisted to mean that 'the political power of the state was to be captured so that it could be abolished'. Members were also urged to "take an active part in the eight-hour movement", and were encouraged to join or found unions. Some of the recommendations contain lots of rules for members, and some rules were sectarian. In a political action resolution, members ... ... "shall not be permitted to participate in the founding of new parties when there is no well-founded reason to believe the same shall fully recognize our principles. "With regard to the practical application of these tactics, be it provided, that if a decision has been made by the local section or district organization in the premises, it shall be binding upon the members; and no member shall take part in such political movement if the section or district has decided against it. "Members are in duty bound to assist in the endeavors of the various economic organizations of wage-workers, by entering the ranks of such organizations, or to found such organizations as will prevent the economic degradation of the workers and improve their conditions. "Members are in duty bound to foster our democratic principles in any trades union or K. of L. Assembly in which they may hold membership." ... The Convention resolved to censure the old administration on a variety of counts. A letter from Rosenberg was reprinted in the same October 26, 1889 edition, and was satirically entitled "Rosenberg's Suicide". The letter was addressed ... "To the Mayor and Citizens of Chicago: "The aggregation of demagogues - Schevitsch, Grotkau, Sanial, the woman Greie and others - who took pains to show their hatred of Americans last Sunday at West 12th street in Turner Hall, Chicago, by hissing the American flag, we beg to inform you are not members of the Socialist Party, whose national convention was held in your city from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3. Inclosed you will please find a copy of our platform, which was then adopted under the flag of our country and the flags of all nations, with which the convention hall was decorated. While we have been and are traduced because of the impudent adoption of the name Socialist by disorderly anarchists, we cannot patent the honorable name of Socialist; but by our energetic opposition to all enemies of the State, and our loyal adherence to the principles which underlie our national fabric, we hope at least to maintain the respect of all shades of political opinion." Rosenberg's "opposition to all enemies of the State" sounds very Social-Democratic. Conspicuous by their absence, both before and after the split, were debates on the differences between either reformism or anarchism with the Marxist theory of the state. The November 2, 1889 issue editorialized on political action, in which the old administration was criticized again: "They could never be made to see, for instance, that the economic organization of the wage workers as a class is the primary requirement of progress in the organization of Labor, also as a class, for purposes of independent political action. Instead, therefore, of taking the lead in the trade union movement, they affected for it a lofty contempt, the latest expression of which may be found in T. J. Morgan's communication to the Chicago Convention. And so, with the aid of that capitalistic press whose favor they are now courting, they succeeded in converting Socialism and the Socialist Labor Party into the most unpopular bugbears of which mention can be made to wage workers already organized for self preservation, and otherwise disposed to organize furthermore, politically, for the conquest of their rights. ... ... "who does not see, for instance, that Labor will assert itself as a unit in politics as soon as it is sufficiently well organized economically, and not before? "If Labor was thus organized we would have no need of giving it any advice as to what it should do. ... independent political action is the natural form in which Labor is inevitably impelled by circumstances to manifest the extent and solidity of its economic organization. ... "If the economic organization be weak, its political manifestations must be correspondingly insignificant. ... It may, therefore, be laid down as a rule: 1. That no political labor movement of any value or significance, even as a mere protest, can take place in a state of economic disorganization; 2. that it were far better to have no such movement at all than to bring labor into contempt by a contemptible manifestation; 3. that, as already stated, a political movement must naturally take place as soon as the economic organizations of Labor shall have reached a sufficient degree of strength and unity; and 4. that in order to set it upon socialistic lines, or at least upon a higher plane in the direction of Socialism than heretofore, it is necessary that Socialists, by actively contributing to the economic organization, should endear themselves to the less advanced wage workers, and become the recognized advocates of all measures and movements for their improvement. "All this is elementary." With regard to the above rules of proportionality between economic and political strength, it may have been a plausible concoction at the time, but its basis in history should have been demonstrated. When the new Party Constitution was adopted, the Convention seems to have quietly eliminated the Board of Supervisors. No further mention of them was found in subsequent editions. In the November 16 edition, Hugh Pentecost and Johann Most, anarchists who had previously met with derision in the old WA, were treated with respect. The December 7, 1889 edition was led off by Rabbi Schindler's article on social injustice. The new platform continued to be published every week along with the pre-coup platform, suggesting, perhaps, that the new editor favored freedom of choice. An editorial on December 14, 1889 declared that the SLP was 'practically a unit'. The new NEC issued a statement to members on December 21, 1889, part of which read: "COMRADES : - The new constitution gives the initiative to the Sections. The Executive is only their agent, and it is up to you to adopt such measures as will secure effective action. ***** The new Constitution affords ample room for all Socialistic revolutionary elements, and leaves no excuse to those who have heretofore stood aloof on account of difference of opinion." The December 28, 1889 edition reported that De Leon had spoken at a First Anniversary gathering of the Nationalists.1890 The January 4, 1890 edition reported that A. Negendank, past spokesperson for the newly defunct Board of Supervision, had been elected editor of Der Sozialist. In early 1890 editions, economic issues were observed to take precedence over political issues, and the topic of anarchism vs. socialism disappeared for quite a while. In the January 18, 1890 edition, it was admitted that Section Cincinnati had gone over to the Rosenberg camp, and that 6 other Sections were sitting on the fence. And yet, opposition to the new administration was downplayed as microscopic. The lead article was devoted to Jewish labor, "a movement of vital interest to American wage-workers". The appearance of a new Jewish journal, called the Arbeiter-Zeitung, was predicted for early 1890, with Krantz as editor. The February 1, 1890 edition reported that the circulation of the WA was on the increase. The proceedings of the NEC were regularly summarized in the reorganized WA. In the February 22, 1890 edition, Sanial replayed the theme that both the weakness of the political movement and the split in the Party had been the result of weakness in the economic movement. In the March 8, 1890 edition, the Nationalists were denigrated as 'timid white-livered Nationalists', or 'devilishly sly', but it was insufficiently explained why. In the special Paris Commune commemorative edition of March 15, 1890, the old platform finally stopped appearing along with the new one. De Leon had a feature article on Nationalism. On the cover appeared one of the most stunningly beautiful graphic depictions of the Commune that I could ever imagine seeing. It was TOTALLY awesome to behold. In the March 29, 1890 edition, S. Stroef wrote a letter on "Scientific Socialism", the last two paragraphs of which are quoted here in full, parts of which might look familiar: "When the proletariat will become strong enough the means of production will be socialized as was already the case with production itself. And when this will be accomplished, the proletariat will cease to exist. Along with it will cease to exist all class distinctions; and the State also, as it now exists, will vanish as smoke, as darkness before the bright warm beams of the rising sun. For only a society which is based on mutually opposed classes, needs a State as an upholder of power, privilege and monopoly. As long as there is no class to oppress and no class to maintain there is no need of a repressive power. ""The first act", says Frederick Engels, "wherein the state appears as really representative of all society - the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society - will be its last act as a State * * * Government over persons will be succeeded by the management of things and the direction of processes of production. A free Society cannot need or tolerate the existence of a State between itself and its members."" Which pirate edition of "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" did Stroef use? The last sentence of his excerpt certainly didn't come from the authorized Aveling translation of 1891, which had yet to appear on the market. As symbolized by his use of asterisks, what Stroef left out, as well as what A.P. (forty-odd years later) left out of his "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism", was the whole epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat; and, like A.P., Stroef didn't take the time to clarify the differences between a worker's state and the capitalist state. In the April 12, 1890 edition, Philip Rappaport wrote a long letter comparing socialism, individualism, and anarchism. In the April 19, 1890 edition, nihilism was compared to anarchism. In the April 26, 1890 edition, a letter to the NEC took note of the meager income available to the Party: "The SLP has no funds for agitation purposes, because all its income is needed to cover the weekly deficit of the party organs. The latter are now edited in such an able manner that they are formidable weapons against our enemies as well as powerful instruments of agitation." Such a modest editor. In response, the NEC issued a notice to the sections requesting as full support of the WA as possible, because ... "The Wilmington Section is the only one that has made it the duty of every member to receive the party organ. This fact should be borne in mind. The constitution grants the sections full autonomy. The Executive Committee does not propose, therefore, to influence them, but only expects from them that they will make propositions concerning this matter. We merely call their attention to the fact that the existence of party organs is a question of life for a political party and that something must consequently be done to support them." The Executive may not have proposed to influence the Sections, but the Executive surely 'expected' things from them. Aside from that, the 'autonomy of the Sections' was how Bakunin had wanted to reorganize the First International, so this excerpt was yet another betrayal of anarchist influence on post-coup SLP ideology. By the May 24, 1890 edition, anti-anarchist propaganda began to appear again, and continued until the metamorphosis of the WA into The People in 1891. Many of the summer 1890 editions reported on the attempts of the Nationalists and others to create a "Commonwealth Party". The July 12 edition called for a joint conference with the SLP and the Nationalists, De Leon being one of the 15 who signed the call. The WA of August 16 printed the Nationalist platform, and, in the following edition, a confluence of interests was observed between the SLP and the Nationalists. The September 6, 1890 edition reported the folding of the "Commonwealth" union of the SLP with the Nationalists. The September 20, 1890 edition reported that the Nationalists were left in a state of anarchy after the breakup of the Commonwealth Party. Gompers was reported to have objected to the presence of the SLP in the A. F. of L. The October 4, 1890 edition reported on De Leon's lecture on the rise, decline and fall of the Commonwealth Party. The October 18, 1890 edition reported a debate about "Anarchism at Nationalist Club #3", including some of De Leon's thoughts: "Last Sunday afternoon Mr. Timothy P. Quinn delivered before Nationalist Club No. 3 an address entitled "Nationalism as I understand it." The lecturer claimed that Nationalism was a rehash of Lassallean Socialism; that the one and the other would establish tyranny; that the ideal system was Anarchy; but that, nevertheless, he was a Nationalist today because he recognized that the road to Anarchy lay via Nationalism. "Mr. E. R. Thomas led off the debate, joining issue with the lecturer as to the beauties of Anarchy and illustrating its workings to-day. James J. Daly, the candidate for Civil Justice on the Socialist Labor ticket, followed Mr. Thomas and illustrated with numerous quotations the inconsistencies of present Anarchists. Daniel De Leon, who next took the floor, said that with the ideal Anarchy pictured by Mr. Quinn, he could have no quarrel. The question, as presented, was simply hypothetical and useless to discuss, and he found quarrel with Anarchists only when by their action they belied their theory, and instead of acting with the Nationalists to-day, so as to hasten the advent of their Anarchist ideal, they went hobnobbing with single taxers and individualists who oppose Nationalism at all points. With one feature of such Anarchists, however, the speaker had a decided quarrel; and this was in relation to their Anarchy of terminology. To call Nationalism Lassallean Socialism was an illustration in point. Nationalism, whose aim is to nationalize industries, and Lassalleanism, whose aim, now abandoned by the German Socialists themselves, was to have the government supply bodies of workingmen with funds to establish co-operative industries, are no more the same than the child is the same as the fully developed man. To call Nationalism Lassalleanism was rank Anarchism in terminology, a fault that all earnest workers in the ranks of the social movement should carefully avoid." Three successive December editions reported on a dispute between WA editor Sanial and A. F. of L. President Samuel Gompers. The December 27, 1890 edition carefully explained the grounds for that dispute: "Previously to the {Detroit} convention, the capitalist press had allowed itself to be used - too willingly, by misstatements and baseless insinuations to spread the impression that the question to be decided at Detroit was whether the Socialist Labor party was to rule the American Federation of Labor, capture the presidency and the other offices and transform the whole organization into a political machine, subservient to the political plans of the socialist leaders. These plans were, of course, understood to be of a wild and violent character, tending - to use Mr. Gompers' words - "to hurl the movement head-long into a path which will leave the working people stranded and lose the practical and beneficial results of their efforts." Mr. Gompers was proclaimed the bulwark who would save the labor movement from the socialist storm, who was determined to put his foot down upon the followers of the red flag and keep the Federation within the line of "pure trades unionism." These newspaper articles, that found their way from New York to the farthest town in the country, all had the tendency to deceive the working people as to the intentions of the parties concerned and the nature of the issues involved. A number of the delegates, who had been sent with instructions, stated on the floor of the convention and in private conversation that they and their constituents had been laboring under entirely erroneous impressions as to the case of the Central Labor Federation and owing to such misconception they were forced to take a position, which they had now learned through the debates was untenable and unjust. "Firstly, the working people were deceived as to the character of the New York Central Labor Federation, the impression being that it was a mere political organization, practically identical with the Socialist Labor Party. The delegates have learnt and their constituents will learn that the C. L. F. is a bona fide central labor body, composed of more regular trades-unions than any central body and is consequently growing in membership and prestige from week to week; that, although it has joined in the independent political action of the Socialist Labor party in the last campaign, it has not been "hurled into a path which left it stranded," but on the contrary has gained much by the absence of old party divisions among its membership and the unanimity of its members on the necessity of independent and honest labor politics. "Secondly, the public was deceived as to the character of the Socialist Labor party. The impression was created, that the SLP is like any other political party, working solely on political lines, and simply trying to use the trade unions for its political agitation; that, furthermore, its aims were wild dreams, which every good citizen and trades-unionist must abhor. It was shown through the debates at Detroit that the Socialist Labor party is entirely different from any other political party; that it is nothing apart from organized labor, but simply another formation of the same force, simply organized labor's political branch, working for the same ends as the economic branch (the trades-unions), and therefore always supplementing the economic branch by organizing trades, assisting in labor's struggles and furthering the national and international consolidation of labor. Its aims were shown to be the true aims of the organized labor movement, so entirely in accord with the logical tendencies of that movement that even Gompers, McNeill and the other leading "pure trades-unionists" acknowledged their faith in those aims. "The issue had been grossly misstated in the press. The debates brought it out sharply. It was not the Socialist Labor party that sought admission, but the Central Labor Federation, a representative trades union body. The Central Labor Federation, in admitting a Socialist section did not admit a "political party" in the ordinary sense, but it simply recognized the necessity of independent political action and the Socialist Labor party as the bona fide labor organization, representing that necessary branch of the movement. That the Socialist Labor party is in respect to its aims a bona fide labor organization, has been expressly admitted by Gompers & Co.; that it is so by its membership, was never denied. But Gompers, although professing to believe in these aims, that is in the abolition of the wage system and its replacement by a co-operative commonwealth, denies the necessity of independent political action to reach that end, claiming that trade-union action alone will be sufficient. He therefore refuses to recognize the Socialist Labor party as a necessary branch of the movement and its right to be admitted to a central labor body. But, is such a position tenable? Can any sane man believe that such radical changes in the social system can be secured without uniting the forces of labor politically as well as economically? Nay, can anyone doubt that political action will be necessary to even realize the far more moderate demands of the American Federation of Labor? These are the issues that are now before the wage-workers for discussion. Let them be discussed at the meeting, in the shop and at home! They will from now on continue on the tapis, until they are rightly decided!-Bakers' Journal." This exposure of some criticisms of the Party of that time was useful. Certainly the critics were astute in their perceptions of the 'wild dreams' of the SLP that had little in common with what's possible, and were wise in their advice that the workers should avoid them.1891 The January 10, 1891 edition reported that the New York Section had been reorganized, and that, during the election of officers, De Leon had been elected as "Agent". The January 24 edition reported that De Leon would tour the country for the Party, speaking in English. The February 14 edition denied rumors that S.E. Schewitsch of the NEC was a spy. Most of the March, 1891 editions featured columns by De Leon. The March 21 edition carried his report on the Party's Chicago Convention. An eight-page edition of "The People" was announced, and hopes were expressed that it would eventually become a daily. The March 28, 1891 edition announced that the Nationalists had adopted the platform of the SLP. Also, it was announced that the Workmen's Advocate would be replaced in April by "The People", the latter journal to be published by the "New Yorker Volkszeitung Publishing Association" "in the interests of the working classes." It is ironic that a party that expressed such concern in 1889 over being taken over by the Volkszeitung group would then allow them to publish its official journal. In that same edition, De Leon reported from Chicago during his agitation tour of the States for the Party: "To give one instance, in closing, of the corrupt condition of things here, and of the need of an element to introduce the purely moral sentiment into the ruling class, the Socialist party has felt itself constrained to incorporate itself under the laws of the State. It felt that unless it did so, its name might be stolen by the politicians and confusion within its ranks would have inevitably ensued." Ah, will socialists ever succeed in pumping moral sentiment into the upper classes? The same March 28, 1891 edition reported on De Leon's speech in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, part of which argued against reform in general: "The Paris Commune ... taught the lesson that, via legislation, Labor has nothing to expect from the ruling, or capitalist class and its political parties, but sops which the right hand will withdraw faster than the left hand will grant; and that, for the rest, the rifle, the bullet and the dagger, calumny, misrepresentation, suppression of the truth, suggestion of the false are the favorite weapons, as it is fit with a ruling class that flies in the teeth of science, and with whom honor is a byword. "Secondly, the Paris Commune is a monument that marks the close of one and the opening of another era. Instructed, tutored and enlightened by experience, Labor can foresee that the carnage of twenty years ago cannot be repeated. If the murderous class that lives upon the blood of men, women and children in the United States, as elsewhere, should again initiate bloodshed it will not be the people, but its enslavers who will bite the dust." Strong words with which to conclude this recounting of my 58-hour acquaintance with the microfilm of the Workmen's Advocate, and though it wasn't an immersion sufficiently deep to be considered an exhaustive study thereof, it did shed a lot of light on the anarchist take-over in 1889, the roles that a number of individuals played therein, and the conflicts between what De Leon espoused in his earlier days of stardom in the labor movement, compared with his later views. My study was also sufficient to convey the impression that the battle in the Party in those days had been between the polar opposites of anarchists and reformers, the Marxists being few and far between, and hardly in evidence, with Sorge as the main exception in his debate with De Leon.APPENDIX THREE:Lenin and the SLP On page 12 of "Proletarian Democracy vs. Dictatorships and Despotism", Arnold Petersen claimed that, prior to 1918, "Lenin, like most of his contemporaries, was in total ignorance of the life and works of Daniel De Leon." After 1918, according to A.P., Lenin then 'devoted himself to a study of De Leon's works'. But, this story is extremely doubtful, as Lenin was hardly isolated in a remote Siberian outpost, dependent upon an annual visit from a postal carrier for his only contact with civilization. He spent a number of years in exile in Europe, where he studied the literature of every workers' movement in the world he found interesting, and kept himself very well informed. The official record in Lenin's Collected Works varies widely with the Party's claims that Lenin respected the Party's SIU program. In the 45 Volumes of Lenin's Collected Works, there are 18 or more substantive references to the SLP of America, to De Leon or to a De Leonist phrase:1) From Lenin's April 6, 1907 "Preface to the Russian Translation of Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Friedrich Sorge and Others" (LCW 12, pp. 363-4): "What Marx and Engels criticise most sharply in British and American socialism is its isolation from the working-class movement. The burden of all their numerous comments on the Social-Democratic Federation in Britain and on the American socialists is the accusation that they have reduced Marxism to a dogma, to "rigid [starre] orthodoxy", that they consider it "a credo and not a guide to action", that they are incapable of adapting themselves to the theoretically helpless, but living and powerful mass working-class movement that is marching alongside them. "Had we from 1864 to 1873 insisted on working together only with those who openly adopted our platform," Engels exclaimed in his letter of January 27, 1887, "where should we be today?" ... ... "the fundamental features of the British and American working-class movements ... are: the absence of any big, nation-wide, democratic tasks facing the proletariat; the proletariat's complete subordination to bourgeois politics; the sectarian isolation of groups, of mere handfuls of socialists, from the proletariat; not the slightest socialist success among the working masses at the elections, etc." If Lenin was familiar with the letters of Engels about America, he probably did not fail to notice the many references to the SLP, and even some to Sanial, De Leon, and others.2) In his "Notebooks on Imperialism", accumulated between 1915 and 1916, Lenin mentioned the SLP twice in "Notebook Omicron" (LCW 39, p. 592):"DEBS "Die Neue Zeit, 1913-14, 32, 1, pp. 1007-08. Debs in the International Socialist Review (1913, March) is for unity of the Socialist Party + the Socialist Labour Party and the Industrial Workers of the World (of which Debs was a founder) against the American Federation of Labour. The New York Volkszeitung ... comes out furiously against Debs ... (... the New York Volkszeitung = the orthodox, the Kautskyites, whereas Debs is a revolutionary, but without a clear theory, not a Marxist.)"3) The second reference to the SLP in the "Notebook Omicron" refers to the correspondence from Engels to Sorge (LCW 39, p. 622): "412 (May 12, 1894), the sectarianism of the Social-Democratic Federation {of England} and of the German-American Socialists in America reduces theory to "rigid orthodoxy" ... ((they want undeveloped workers to swallow the theory all at once))."4) In the context of trying to find parties possibly interested in forming a new International, Lenin mentioned the correspondence of Marx and Engels with Sorge, and specifically referred to the sectarianism of the early SLP. In this November, 1915 "Letter to the Secretary of the Socialist Propaganda League", Lenin wrote (LCW 21, pp. 424-7): "We agree with you that we must be against craft Unionism & in favor of industrial Unionism, i.e. of big, centralized Trade Unions & in favor of the most active participation of all members of party in all economic struggles & in all trade union & cooperative organizations of the working class. But we consider that such people as Mr. Legien in Germany & Mr. Gompers in the U. St. are bourgeois and that their policy is not a socialist but a nationalistic, middle class policy. Mr. Legien, Mr. Gompers & similar persons are not the representatives of working class, they represent the aristocracy & bureaucracy of the working class. ... "We never object in our press to the unity of S. P. & SLP in America. We always quote letters from Marx & Engels (especially to Sorge, active member of American socialist movement), where both condemn the sectarian character of the SLP."5) A volume of letters and miscellaneous writings contained two of Lenin's letters to Alexandra Kollontai from March of 1916 (LCW 36, p. 374): "And what of the Socialist Labour Party? After all, they are internationalists (even if there is something narrowly sectarian about them). Have they got their copy of Internationale Flugbl?tter? Have you any contacts with them?"6) In his second letter to Kollontai from March, 1916, Lenin continued to express doubts about the value of the SLP (LCW 36, p. 375): "Do you think Appeal to Reason would refuse to reprint Internationale Flugbl?tter No. 1? Is it worth trying? "Will the Socialist Labour Party agree to publish, if we pay the costs? Are these people hopeless sectarians or not? Have you any connections with them? Why don't they send us copies of their papers in the Internationale Sozialistische Kommission? (I saw some quite by chance.) Or are they maniacs with an idée fixe {fixed idea} about a special "economic" organisation of workers?"7) In a letter to N. I. Bukharin In October of 1916, Lenin continued to request left-wing literature from all over (LCW 43, pp. 577-8): "Regarding America. I wrote a number of letters there in 1915: all were confiscated by the accursed French and British censors. "I would very much like "(1) To have the manifesto of the Zimmerwald Left published there in English. "(2) Ditto-our pamphlet on the war (revised for the new edition). "(3) To arrange, if possible, for the most important publications and pamphlets of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party (I have only the Appeal to Reason) to be sent gratis to the C.C."8) In a Nov. 30, 1916 letter to Inessa Armand, Lenin wrote about the SLP's minimum (reforms) programme (LCW 35, p. 254): "The question of the relationship of imperialism to democracy and the minimum programme is arising on an ever wider scale (see the Dutch programme in No. 3 of the Bulletin {"Bulletin of the International Socialist Commission"}; the American SLP have thrown out the whole minimum programme."9) In February of 1917, Lenin wrote to Alexandra Kollontai (of the Workers' Opposition) after her trip to America. He questioned various aspects of American political movements and expressed a curiosity about SLP literature (LCW 35, pp. 285-6): "I have already received No. 1 of The Internationalist, and am very glad of it. I have inadequate information about the conference of the SLP and the S.P. on January 6-7, 1917. It appears that the SLP is throwing out all its minimum programme (there is a temptation and a danger for Bukharin, who has been stumbling "at that there spot" since 1915!!). It is a great pity that I cannot collect all the documents about the SLP (I asked Bukharin about it, but letters clearly get lost). Have you any material? I could return it after reading."10) Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Inessa Armand in February of 1917, Lenin wrote (LCW 35, pp. 288-9): "Among the Left in America, she {Kollontai} says, things are not going badly, though Kollontai is afraid of anarcho-syndicalist tendencies in the SLP (N.Iv. {Bukharin}, she says, is not afraid of this). I have read in the SLP organ (The Weekly People) that they are throwing overboard their minimum programme." ...11) In a letter to Alexandra Kollontai in March of 1917, Lenin was more optimistic (LCW 35, pp. 291-2): "I only see and know in the firmest way possible that the question of the programme and tactics of a new socialism, genuinely revolutionary Marxism and not rotten Kautskyanism, is on the agenda everywhere. This is clear both from the SLP and The Internationalist in America, and from the data about Germany, ... and about France ... and so on."12) In another letter to Alexandra Kollontai in March of 1917, Lenin continued to be optimistic about the SLP (LCW 35, p. 296): "First, the Cadets will not allow anyone a legal workers' party except the Potresovs and Co. Secondly, if they do allow it, we shall set up as before our own separate party and without fail combine legal work with illegal. "On no account a repetition of something like the Second International! On no account with Kautsky! Definitely a more revolutionary programme and tactics (there are elements of it in K. Liebknecht, the SLP in America, the Dutch Marxists, etc.) and definitely the combination of legal and illegal work. Republican propaganda, the struggle against imperialism, as before revolutionary propaganda, agitation and struggle with the aim of an international proletarian revolution and the conquest of power by the "Soviets of Workers' Deputies" (and not the Cadet swindlers)."13) In his April 1917 pamphlet entitled "The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution", Lenin mentioned the SLP in a long list of parties and persons all over the world he considered to be internationalists, or close to it (LCW 24, pp. 78-9): "Closest to the internationalists in deed are: ... Loriot and his friends ... Guilbeaux ... some of the members of the British Socialist Party ... the Scottish socialist schoolteacher MacLean ... and hundreds of British socialists who are in jail for some offense. They, and they alone, are internationalists in deed. In the United States, the Socialist Labour Party and those within the opportunist Socialist Party who in January 1917 began publication of the paper, The Internationalist; ... and so on. "It is not a question of shades of opinion, which certainly exist even among the Lefts. It is a question of trend."14) In a letter "To the Bureau of the Central Committee Abroad" in August of 1917, Lenin wrote (LCW 35, pp. 321-2): "Money for the conference will be found. It is possible to issue several numbers of its Bulletin. There is a centre for it in Stockholm. There is a French "foothold" (Demain) and an English one (the "Socialist Labour Party" of America; its delegate Reinstein* was recently in Petrograd and will probably be in Stockholm) - though by the way in addition to the SLP (the "Socialist Labour Party" of America) there is also an English foothold, Tom Mann in Britain, the minorities within the British Socialist Party, the Scottish socialists and The International in America. "It would be simply criminal to postpone now the calling of a conference of the Left. ... "(8) You must get your letters sent on here - I hope to receive immediately just as detailed a letter as mine ... and literature as well: files from the middle of June, at the very least, of ... Weekly People (SLP) ... and others."__________ "* I have no idea what sort of bird this is. According to the press, he greeted the "Unity Congress" of the Mensheviks!! That means he's a suspect bird."15) In the October 1917 pamphlet entitled "Revision of the Party Program", Lenin gathered ideas from all over the world for a new Bolshevik Party program (LCW 26, p. 175): ... "set up a committee for the purpose of collecting material on what has been done in other countries in order to "feel the way" ... for a new programme (... we may also mention the American Socialist Labour Party and its demand that "the political state give way to industrial democracy")."16) In his June 1920 pamphlet "'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder", Lenin appreciated a De Leonist phrase or two (LCW 31, pp. 52-3): "Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" (as we have always said the Mensheviks are), or "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America."17) In his July 6, 1920 "Preface to the French and German Editions" to "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", Lenin repeated De Leon's phrases (LCW 22, p. 194): "This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie, the "Versaillais" against the "Communards"."18) In a letter to N. I. Bukharin ,"in the late summer of 1920" Lenin wrote (LCW 36, p. 528): "I think we should publish in Russian De Leon's Two Pages, etc., with Fraina's foreword and notes*. I shall also write a few words. "If you agree, will you give the word through the State Publishing House. "If you don't, let's discuss it."__________ * "There was no Russian edition of the book." {From a note by Progress Publishers.} In addition to the above, the only other places I could find references to the SLP were 1) on page 409 of volume 36, in a letter to Kollontai in July of 1916, where Lenin mentioned the SLP in a list of organizations in America to be contacted, 2) on page 44 of Volume 44, where Lenin was requesting the assistance of an information service to send a message to the labor press of the entire world in November of 1917, and 3) on page 268 of Volume 45, in a note to Reinstein and others, mentioning Heywood's allegations of Adolph S. Carm as a possible spy and as a delegate of the SLP to the Comintern, i.e., the Communist (Third) International. The 45 Volumes also contain a few references to onetime SLP member Boris Reinstein, who was mentioned by Lenin mostly in regard to facilitating business deals between the Soviet Union and Julius and Armand Hammer. With appropriate feedback, I could include citations that I might have missed on this go-around in a possible future edition, since the indexes to Lenin's Collected Works were by no means perfect. APPENDIX FOUR:Examples of Anarchist Ideology The following elements of SLP ideology contain one or more anarchist distortions of Marxism, other theories, or history:Distorted Marxist Theories: 'The political part of the revolution is the electoral victory of the workers' party, the abolition of elected representative bodies, and the discarding of capitalist law, while the economic aspect is the taking and holding of the means of production. 'No alliance between the progressive proletariat and the reactionary middle classes is possible. The hammer and sickle on the old Soviet flag did not signify any kind of class alliance whatsoever. 'The Marxist theory of the state was as good as could have been gotten in the bad old days of underdevelopment, but the form into which workers can organize has at last been discovered, and all antique political solutions to modern problems can be put aside. All that is needed is to organize Socialist Industrial Unions, dismantle the state when the Party is elected, and classless, stateless paradise will begin. 'Marx used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably because they both represent the same revolutionary and post-capitalist stage of society applicable to advanced countries. 'During the revolution, the building of an economic agency to administer production is at the top of the list of priorities for the working class. 'Marx wanted workers to abolish the state and seize the means of production. 'In the Marxist theory of the state for developed countries, the capitalist state is abolished after the political victory of the workers' party, and the state is replaced with a classless and stateless administration of things. 'The consequence of the proletariat's failure to ready the classless and stateless administration of things for the moment of its political victory will be to face the wrath of the capitalist state. 'Workers will not be able to remedy anarchy in production until the abolition of the state and capitalism. 'Engels didn't know the difference between socialism and state capitalism, and did not live to see his state capitalism idea turn into full-blown fascism. 'There was a deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the state that Lenin recognized, but which Daniel De Leon corrected with his Socialist Industrial Union solution. 'Lenin saw the need for an agency to administer the economy after the revolution. If Engels had lived longer, he would have seen the need for a post-revolutionary economic administrative agency as clearly as Lenin did, and probably more so. 'Advances in the means of production enabled Marx to predict peaceful evolution in the advanced capitalist countries. He just could not see the form into which they should organize to make it happen, so was forced to rely upon the capitalist state to administer production for a while. 'Technologically advanced countries should not follow the obsolete Marxist model of proletarian revolution for underdeveloped countries.Phony 'Conditions' Theories: 'Due to their having lived in an era of backward economic conditions, Marx, Engels and Lenin had only incomplete or half-baked ideas. 'People were quite a bit more coarse and savage in previous centuries, and the refinement, civility and suitability for socialism of their societies was proportional to the development of their means of production. 'After a revolution in a backward country, the capitalist state survives the revolution in order to manage production. 'The lower the development of the productive forces, the greater the need for proletarian dictatorship. 'Marx and Lenin used the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in their times and countries to convey the sense of the abolition of the state and its replacement by the administration of things, except that their theories were modified by the backward conditions under which they lived. 'Marx conceived of a proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry and middle classes. Those classes had important places in production back in Europe during Marx's time, but since they barely exist in the USA, or play little role in production today, there is no longer a need for a proletarian dictatorship over such marginalized or non-existent classes. 'Marx had two theories of the state: one for technologically advanced countries, economic rather than political, and an obsolete theory for individual backward countries, political rather than economic, complete with a transition period, a proletarian dictatorship over middle classes, and an oppressive state apparatus. 'The conditions that Marx and Lenin wrote about in their respective countries were similarly lowly enough for the proletarian dictatorship idea to have been appropriate for back then, but not to the USA. 'Stalin put Marx's theory of proletarian dictatorship over the peasantry into place in the old Soviet Union, which also led to the oppression of the peasants that the world criticized. 'The revolution in the USA will yield classless and stateless society directly after capitalism. In less developed countries, workers will have to wield the capitalist state to repress the middle classes, and improve productive forces during their transition to classless and stateless society. 'Though Marx and Engels knew that the workers cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for their own purposes, they were forced to rely on the capitalist state to perform the tasks of socialist reconstruction and to administer production, because conditions had not yet sufficiently evolved to show them the form of the new administration of things. 'A country like Russia needs a transition period to develop the productive forces in order to ascend to classless and stateless society, while a transition period was not considered necessary in technologically advanced countries. 'For advanced capitalist countries, the only possible kind of post-revolutionary society is classless and stateless society. Two stages of post-revolutionary society are more appropriate for economically backward countries. 'If there isn't any sign of underdevelopment in the USA, and if the USA has the greatest technological development of all, and if their productive forces have no need to be further built up, then no transition period or proletarian dictatorship is needed. 'Farmers and small businesses play an insignificant role in American production today. The proletariat and the upper classes are the only classes that count. 'Classless and stateless society will emerge from capitalism right after revolutions in technologically advanced countries. The USA has the necessary level of technology to leap to classless and stateless society. 'Because the superdevelopment of the means of production in the USA also enables the formation of Socialist Industrial Unions, not much can prevent the establishment of classless and stateless socialism when the party abolishes the state and itself.Distorted Theories of the State: 'Force = Economic Power. 'The state consists of no more than elected representative bodies, such as the Senate, the House of Representatives, and other kinds of elected assemblies. 'The state that Engels thought would die out was the capitalist state. Under the backward conditions of his time, socialism was to be implemented using the old state machine. 'The post-revolutionary state power which the proletariat might be tempted to wield turns out to be nothing better than capitalist state power. 'After the victory of the proletariat, it was theorized that the old capitalist state machinery might have to be altered to get it to conform to its new tasks of socialist reconstruction. 'If state power always and exclusively is bourgeois state power, it would be quite useless to try to wield that which would always be used against workers. 'Workers cannot take state power because the state is the means of oppression of workers, and is owned and controlled by the capitalist class, so the workers should not try to wield that which has always been used against them. 'In the old days, the only tool the workers could use after the revolution to keep down their capitalist enemies was the capitalist state. If all property is transformed into state property, it is transformed into capitalist state property. 'Under backward economic conditions, the capitalist state may survive the proletarian revolution, but only to manage production for a while after the revolution. 'All states are capitalist states, including the political state. 'Working class state power is inconceivable. 'During a revolution, it is more effective to take over the means of production than it is to take the power of the state. 'The working class may take state power in backward economies, and then use it to repress the middle classes and small property-holding peasants, but not the upper classes. 'The state is a means of oppression only, and has no interest in production, so it is useless and dangerous to maintain it after the revolution. 'The purposes of the state and workers' party are destructive only. Both will be abolished after the revolution. 'In the old days, the proletariat was not to create its own state power, but instead was to use the capitalist state in order to administer production after the revolution. Private property was to be gradually converted into capitalist state property. When the capitalist state represented the whole of society, it was to die out. 'Anarchists wanted to abolish the state out of hand with nothing to take its place, but that would have been foolish, since the capitalist state was the only organization still in existence after the revolution that the proletariat theoretically was forced to use to administer production after its victory at the ballot box. 'By correcting the deficiency in the Marxist analysis of the State, De Leon was the only one to add anything to Marxian Science.Phony Theories About Political Power: 'The political state was slated for abolition under socialism. 'The highest conceivable proletarian political victory is that of the electoral victory of the workers' party at the ballot box. 'Political power is useless to the proletariat, for it can only be wielded by the capitalist class. 'Political power is the power of capitalists to repress workers, but sometimes it falls into the hands of workers without them fighting for it, and then they have to figure out what to do with it. 'Marx's recommendation for proletarian political action might have been the best anyone could do for his day and age, but it is incorrect today. 'Democracy has nothing to do with the possibility of peaceful solutions. All political forms are to be abolished anyway. Marx and Engels regarded democracies as bourgeois forms of rule with no intrinsic value to the working classes. The term 'Social-Democracy' came about as a result of confused attempts to find political solutions to the social question, instead of the economic solution that can only be achieved by organizing into Socialist Industrial Unions. 'There is a sharp division between proletarian political and economic activities. Political power is destructive only, and should only be used to abolish the capitalist state. Economic reconstruction begins only after political action ceases. 'The destructive state and parties are bourgeois only, and are to be abolished, self-destruct, or commit suicide; but the economic union is constructive and proletarian in character and will survive the revolution.'Anarchist World Outlook: 'A workers' state is inconceivable, so every state is a capitalist state, even those that claim to be socialist. Hence, in the presence of all of those capitalist states, there is no socialism anywhere. 'If any country has an alleged socialist revolution, it must immediately abolish its state in order to prove that it has indeed had a true socialist revolution. 'The USA has the level of technology necessary to leap to classless and stateless society. Socialism is therefore possible for the USA, but not for backward countries like Russia. 'Socialism = Communism = classless and stateless society, and the technologically advanced countries require no political transition period to reach that stage. Since all countries today have state apparatuses, that proves that there is no socialism anywhere in the world. 'If the state owned and controlled the means of production in the old Soviet Union, and if all state ownership can only be capitalist state ownership; then the Soviet experience could only have been an example of the alleged Communist Party comprising a new capitalist class. 'A technologically advanced country can have a revolution and celebrate classless and stateless communist paradise, even while surrounded by hostile capitalist dictatorships on its borders. There was little valid excuse for the Soviet Union not abolishing its state after coming to power in 1917, except, perhaps, for the large peasant class for the proletariat to have to repress. 'The social system to which a country may aspire is governed mainly by the economic development of that country. The lower levels of technology in the alleged revolutionary countries correspond to a type of social organization less in stature than socialism, namely, a bourgeois republic, or even a feudal monarchy. If such a low economic organism was all the raw material that an alleged revolutionary country was allowed to start with, then it is obvious that a revolution of socialist potential is impossible in such a country, and, if impossible, then attempts in that direction are not worth supporting, for all that could be achieved would be an evil state apparatus that would oppress the workers. Only the American economy and few others can support socialism, so the claims of other states as having had socialist revolutions are incorrect or fraudulent, so are not worth supporting in the least. 'Due to the backwardness of their economies and technology, the poor and oppressed in the colonies have no choice but to be oppressed by the state. There is nothing that the workers of the industrialized countries can do for the people in the colonies but to abolish their states and export their technologies to enable the poor colonies to build up their economies, which will inspire the workers in the colonies to also organize into SIUs, and finally someday abolish their own oppressive state apparatuses as well. 'There is no reason for the oppressed workers in the colonies to fight for national independence by taking state power, because, by doing so (i.e., by using the capitalist state), they will only end up being exploited by their own national bourgeoisie and will thus get absolutely nowhere. The only hope for the oppressed people in the colonies is to wait for American workers to have their SIU revolution first so that the Americans can provide the colonies with the machinery with which they can modernize their primitive tools of production; then the workers in the colonies can organize their own Industrial Unions and liberate themselves at their own pace. 'The three superpowers were battling each other for hegemony over the region, and the Vietnamese had no chance whatsoever to win a struggle against any of them. Because of their low state of economic development, it didn't matter who won or if the superpowers simply pulled out and went home, because the Vietnamese would only go on being exploited by one of the superpowers or by their own national bourgeoisie as oppressively as ever. Since it didn't matter which ruling class won, American demonstrations against the war were a total waste of time, for, what with the comparatively low level of economic development, the Vietnamese were automatically condemned to suffer the fate of an irrevocable enslavement to their capitalist, feudal or imperialist ruling classes until some day when their productive forces evolve to the point when the workers can organize themselves into Socialist Industrial Unions and progress to the classless and stateless administration of things.'Distorted Union and Industrial Union Theories: 'Marx and Engels failed to solve the problem of specifying an industrial form for future society. 'Existing unions are tools of capitalist interests only, and serve as just another means by which workers are enslaved to the capitalist class. 'If trade unions were so important in Russia with its tiny proletariat, then unions would be super-important in the USA, where the proportion of workers is so much higher. 'Because the continued use of the capitalist state after the political victory means certain failure for the proletarian revolution, workers must organize into Industrial Unions so that the capitalist state can immediately be abolished. 'Revolutions in backward countries were violent, but revolutions in advanced countries will be peaceful, provided people use De Leon's Socialist Industrial Union form. 'The only body capable of a constructive administration of production is the Socialist Industrial Union. 'It was advances in the means of production that showed De Leon the form into which workers should unite in order to peacefully achieve their emancipation. 'The union is suited to run the means of production, while the workers' party is suited for shutting down the capitalist state, and for subsequent self-destruction. 'The proper structure of economic power in the USA would ensure a peaceful revolution here. The proletariat should concentrate on obtaining the ultimate economic power that would result from taking possession of the means of production. 'It would be fine for the workers to counteract the capitalist economic dictatorship with a proletarian economic dictatorship, i.e., the SIU, but not to counteract capitalist political power with a proletarian dictatorship. 'Lenin thought that De Leon did the proletarian movement a great service by at last discovering the new form of the administration of things. Socialist Industrial Unionism is what they wanted to build in the old Soviet Union.'Miscellaneous Phony Theories: 'Anarchists wished to destroy the state with nothing to take its place, not even an organization to administer production. 'The party of the proletariat, upon coming to power, turns its back on the proletariat and becomes its new oppressor. That is why De Leon warned of the menace of a mere political victory of the workers' party. Without the SIU having been organized to lock out the capitalists and establish the Industrial Union administration of production when the state and the parties are abolished, then the capitalist state will continue to oppress the workers. 'The question of revolution in any country is a question of form. The Soviets were a non-American form of proletarian democracy, not to be mistakenly adopted by Americans. 'The workers' party should model its organizational structure on the form of the state to be abolished. 'Parties other than the SLP are necessarily the instruments of capitalist interests. 'There has been a conspiracy of silence and calumniation directed against the Party to ensure that the Party program for change will never be heard by the majority, who would be saved by it. Without knowledge of the Party program, the workers will most likely make the mistake of seeking political solutions to the social ills that plague us, and will thus be condemned to suffer under the eternal oppression of the state. 'Since the government expresses only the interests of the ruling class, the exercise of duties of office by an elected Party member would betray the interests of the working class. 'Early Party scholars didn't have access to all the works that are available to modern scholars. There were differences in translations between the literature that the SLP relied upon and what others relied upon, which explains the differences between Party literature and others. 'Rank-and-file members of socialist and workers' parties are not ready for freedom of speech or democracy within their parties and organizations. 'Reforms are of fleeting importance only, and what the capitalists can give, they can also take away. Therefore, workers should reject any attempts to bring about reforms, and work only for the party whose program is that of replacing the state with the classless and stateless administration of things. 'The use of illegal means in the struggle are not revolutionary. 'Illegal means were more appropriate to Soviet conditions than to American conditions. 'In any conflict between the proletariat and the ruling classes, the ruling classes will flee or otherwise behave as cowards, but will not fight back. 'Only today's working class would count in a revolution, so workers can ignore alliances with other classes.'(End Part H. End of Book.) ................
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